Skittering thief
by ShayneT
Summary: Granted powers from another world, Taylor Hebert must deal with a Cape world that is out to kill her when they discover that she can permanently steal powers.
1. Chapter 1

"It was a random thought," Contessa said. "But it's going to change everything."

Their conspiracy had been trying to save the world for years, using means that would be called reprehensible by anyone who wasn't intensely aware of the alternative.

Hurting a few for the sake of the many had seemed like a trade off that had to made, and at one point Contessa would have thought that she was immune to the moral quandary.

Now that there was an alternative, thought, she found herself reluctant to turn normal people into monsters simply for the chance of creating another parahuman to fight the Endbringers or Scion.

"I asked the Path if there was a way to create superhuman powers that did not involve the Entities."

Alexandria, Eidolon and Dr. Mother stared at her. Simply asking the question was absurd. Powers came from the Entities; that was a basic axiom that Cauldron had been formed around. They harvested powers from a dead Entity even as the other spread them around the world, but sometimes there were...problems with the process.

"And there was?" Alexandria asked. "Some sort of Tinker invention?"

Contessa shook her head. "Another world. There's a world with naturally occurring capes, and people there have discovered ways to artificially induce those powers. We have the same basic genetics, although it doesn't express naturally here."

"And you've found out how to do this?" Dr. Mother asked.

Contessa pulled out an attache case which she opened. Inside were six syringes.

"Are the powers good?" Alexandria asked.

Contessa shook her head. "One power per person, and most are relatively weak, but there are others that are much more versatile than anything we have. They have actual telepaths, and time travelers, and people who can copy the powers of others without limits."

"That...sounds useful," Alexandria said. "Especially the time travel."

"Their precogs are better than ours as well. Some of them could actually target Endbringers and Scion."

The shards that created powers were limited so the users couldn't attack the Entities that handed them out. Precognition was even more limited.

"Why aren't we recruiting right now?" Alexandria asked.

"That would is a hellscape where a virus had killed ninety percent of humanity right now," Contessa said.

"Right now?"

"They have time travelers," Contessa said. "From the past. Their present keeps flickering back and forth as time travelers change things. The people who live there don't notice, except maybe the precogs, but if you are trapped there when the timeline alters...you are erased from history as though you had never existed."

"Could we use that against the Endbringers or even Scion?" Eidolon asked excitedly.

Contessa shook her head. "We fight on their time schedule, and I can't predict when that will be. Besides, some of the timelines don't last very long. The one where they made the vials available to everyone lasted only twenty two minutes. The current one is going to last at least six months before it gets changed."

"You didn't get the formula?" Alexandria asked.

Contessa shook her head. "It was too well guarded to get to in less than twenty two minutes. They've got experience with every sort of capes, and people with abilities to nullify even our powers. This was the best I'm going to get for the moment."

"So we analyze the formula with our best Tinkers," Alexandria said. "And then we change our business model?"

"Unlike trigger events, I can get an idea of what power the formula will give. It's not like handing out shards; it's the same formula for everyone. The powers they get depend on their own genetics."

"So we offer the shards to anyone who is likely to get a weak power," Alexandria said,"And this new method to anyone likely to get something useful."

Having a thinker power on top of being the most powerful brute in the world had always seemed unfair to Contessa, but she'd never said anything. Alexandria was a very useful person in both her public and secret identities after all.

She nodded. "Five of these vials need to go off for testing. From what I understand from the Path, creating the formula is not going to be easy, but it's going to be useful."

"And the last vial?" Alexandria asked.

"The Path has something else in mind for it," Contessa said. "Door!"

A doorway opened, and three men stepped into the room. One was a minor villain who had gained his powers from Cauldron. He was able to erase memories, which he mostly used to steal, leaving people confused about what had happened. He could also put people to sleep. As part of the deal for him to gain powers he owed favors; this was one of them.

The other two were unpowered members of the PRT. They were totally loyal and willing to forget everything they saw. They were wearing Hazmat suits, which was a step more than was probably needed, but it was better safe than sorry.

"You are all clear on what you have to do?" she asked.

They nodded.

"Door!" Contessa called out.

A moment later a slender rectangle opened in space, no larger than the size of a school locker.

A screaming girl covered in toxic sludge slid out onto the floor. She looked up.

"Alexandria?" she asked.

From the doorway into the locker could be heard the sounds of a crowd of children laughing and taunting the girl on the ground. Contessa held her hand up, gesturing for everyone to be quiet. The doorway behind the girl snapped shut and a moment later she slumped to the ground.

"She won't remember any of this," the villain said. He hand a hand on her forehead.

Contessa handed one of the syringes to one of the PRT members.

"Anyone with powers is not to touch her once the injection is done. I don't think you would care for the results."

A moment later it was done, and a moment later the two unpowered members were shoving the unconscious girl back into the locker, along with as much of the sludge as they could collect. It looked to be composed of weeks old tampons and other detritus and the scent was overpowering.

Shoving the girl back into hell was yet another of the steps that had to be taken. The needs of the many outweighed the needs of any one person, even if the girl reminded Contessa of herself as she'd been at that age, all gawky and uncoordinated.

The real reason she hadn't been able to obtain more vials was that she'd spent part of that twenty two minutes kidnapping one of the precogs from that world. Unlike any shard based cape, he really was able to anticipate the Endbringers.

She had a drawing in her desk of exactly this happening, a cartoon, but enough to identify the girl and the moment.

As the door closed the girl into the locker once again, Contessa felt sure that they were finally making progress.

There was a price for everything, however, and wearily she consulted the Path about a way to remove the stench from an extradiminsional conference room.

This was going to take a while.

* * *

After three days in the hospital it was a week before I realized that I was a cape.

Sophia had been quiet for most of that time, doubtlessly waiting for the shoe to drop, but the administration didn't do anything. In order to pay for my hospital bills, we'd been forced to give up our ability to sue, and this gave the administration all they needed to ignore me.

That was like giving permission to Sophia and Madison and Emma to continue doing what they were doing.

If exposing me to hepatitis and who knows what other blood borne illnesses hadn't been enough, they'd left me there throughout the entire school day. Apparently I'd passed out almost as soon as I'd been forced inside and I hadn't awoken until hours later. In a way that was a blessing. At least I hadn't had to experience most of it.

Without a passing school janitor, it was possible that I might have been there overnight or even longer.

If that wasn't enough to get them punished, then nothing short of murder would. Principal Blackwell had insisted that there were no witnesses and that I hadn't seen my attackers, even though they had been there surrounding me as I'd opened my locker.

It took a week before Sophia attacked me again, and at first it was the usual shoulder checks and trying to push me down stairs.

However, it wasn't until I was surrounded again that everything changed.

* * *

"I thought I knew how weak you were," Emma said. "But you passed out less than thirty seconds after you went in there. How lame is that?"

The other girls around me snickered. I wanted to push past them, but I knew from experience that I would only be able to do that by using physical force, and if I did they'd go to Blackwell and claim that _I_ was the one bullying _them_.

For some reason their claims against me didn't need the same kind of evidence that mine did against them. It didn't take anything at all for them to get me in trouble, whereas I would need camera footage and eyewitness testimony from Legend himself to get anything done.

All I could do was try to not let them know how it was affecting me.

"I think I still smell it on her," Madison snickered. "Maybe we should start calling her Skunk Hebert."

For a moment I wished that I really did have Skunk powers. Spraying the entire crowd of girls would be incredibly satisfying, even if attacking people with parahuman powers would earn me a one way ticket to jail.

"Smells like a homeless person," Emma said. "Have you and your father been kicked out yet? Have you been living off free samples from the grocery store again?"

"Won't ever get a period if you don't eat enough," Madison said. "Which means you'll never be a real girl."

"Are we sure she is?" one of the hangers on leaned forward helpfully. "Maybe she's not really a she. Maybe he should be hanging out in the boys' locker room."

"Boys wouldn't have her," Sophia said finally. "Too weak, too wimpy."

"Her mother would be so ashamed," Emma said. "Worked for Lustrum herself. Maybe that's what happened to her father."

She made a snip snip gesture with her fingers.

Lustrum had went to the Birdcage for encouraging her followers to castrate men.

I found myself suddenly enraged. Talking about me was bad enough, but insulting my parents was something else. She'd been my friend once, and my parents had never treated her as anything other than their own child. They'd loved her and now she was talking like this about them?

Despite myself I found myself taking a step forward, and a moment later I found myself being grabbed, my arm being twisted up behind me and my face slammed into the lockers in front of me. My glasses twisted and almost broke.

"You're a loser, Hebert," Sophia gritted into my ear. "And you'll always be a loser."

As she moved to let me go her hand brushed against mine, and my knees suddenly felt weak. I almost fell as a sudden feeling of pleasure caused shivers up my spine.

Sophia stared at me for a moment before she and the others moved away.

I staggered to the bathroom to look at my twisted gasses. I was leaning against the sink when I felt...something...in the pit of my belly. A moment later the world around me went gray and I fell forward, passing through the sink like there was nothing there. I stumbled through the wall and fell to the floor, my head sticking out of the other end of the wall into the boy's bathroom.

Fortunately no one else was there.

As I lay there I suddenly felt excruciating pain. Apparently I had to keep moving or I was in trouble.

I scrambled back through the wall, sprawling backward onto the dirty floor of the girls' bathroom.

I was a cape!

Somehow I instinctively knew that this wasn't my power. It hadn't kicked in until Sophia had touched me, and I suspected that the power had come from her.

There was only one cape in the Bay with this sort of power, and she was a Ward.

Suddenly everything made a sickening sort of sense. The Protectorate needed people with powers, They were outnumbered by the villains three to one. Getting Blackwell and the teachers to cover up anything Sophia did was probably easier than finding someone to replace Shadow Stalker.

I'd always wanted to be a hero, but if the real heroes were letting people like Sophia do anything they wanted to people with no possibility of repercussion, then did I even want to be associated with them?

I remembered a quote from somewhere. " _All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."_

What they were doing was considerably more than nothing. They were giving Sophia the green light to do anything she wanted to me.

I was a cape now, but I had no idea how long these powers of Sophia's would last. Most power copiers were limited by time. I'd read that somewhere.

Still, getting them back from her would be a trivial matter.

I stared at the computer in front of me, a chill going down my spine. It had been a week, and I still had my powers.

I'd done research online, and the PRT had power categories that they divided Capes into. I was apparently what was called a Trump, someone who could manipulate powers in some way.

Shadow Stalker hadn't been seen in a week, and this morning the PRT had made an announcement that she was taking a leave of absence due to family matters.

My mind raced. I listened to the girls around me even when they thought I wasn't, and there hadn't been as much as a peep about any problems with Sophia. She'd been out of school for two days, and when she'd come back she'd seemed angry and maybe even a little scared.

Was it possible that I wasn't copying powers, I was _stealing_ them?

If that was true, half the plans I'd been making were never going to work. If I was stealing powers, and if it was permanent as I was beginning to suspect then the plans I'd been making for copying Glory Girl and Panacea were off the table.

I'd have to limit myself to villains, and even that was a problem. I hadn't gotten Sophia's powers until I'd touched her bare skin. Most heroes and villains had costumes that covered their entire bodies.

It was much easier to maintain a secret identity after all if you weren't leaving fingerprints all over every crime scene. The more a costume covered, the less you could be identified by hair or tattoos or inconvenient birthmarks.

The only capes who didn't bother were capes who were stronger than everyone else, people like Lung and Hookwolf. They'd kill me before I ever got close enough to touch them, easily.

Even worse, once they realized what I could do they'd all be after me. Every cape out there would feel incredibly threatened if I could permanently remove their powers. It was only a step away from that to deciding that I needed to be permanently removed.

The moment I used my powers in public, everything was over. I'd be facing snipers every time I went out, and I suspected that they'd decide that the unwritten rules wouldn't apply to me. They'd come after my dad, come after my house.

Even the heroes...if they were willing to let Sophia all but murder me, what would they do when they realized what I was?

I'd always thought that being a hero would make everything better, but somehow this felt like it was only the beginning of everything getting worse.

I'm Taylor Hebert, and this is the life I've been given.

Despite everything I can't help but feel a sense of excitement. I'm a cape! Even if I never use my main power again I can still be the hero that Sophia should have been.

If I dressed up like her I might even make the PRT think that she was lying about losing her powers, and there had been some rumors about Shadow Stalker being on probation.

I found myself laughing on the dirty floor of the girl's bathroom.

It might take a while, but I had a feeling that my life was about to get a lot better.


	2. Anger

Trying to imitate Sophia's suit was harder than I'd thought, and after a while I gave up on the idea entirely. I probably could have afforded the hockey mask she'd used when she first worked as a vigilante, but the black bodysuit wasn't something I could afford, considering that my life savings amounted to thirty nine dollars.

Her modern suit was even more out of the question. The mask and metal gauntlets were well out of my price range, and I didn't have any skill at metalworking or ironically, as a tailor.

Her cape was intimidating, but I could think of too many ways that it could be grabbed or even used to strangle me. I had no intention of leaving myself that vulnerable.

The best I could do was a black hoodie and black jeans that I already owned. I found a metal face mask that covered the lower half of my face. It had the lower half of a skull painted on it, and had apparently been used for paintball. I'd pretended that I was joining my non-existent boyfriend's paintball team, and the owner had been helpful. With large goggles and the hoodie, I was unrecognizable.

Better yet, when I shifted into my shadow form, the painted skull looked particularly disturbing. In the light it wasn't so bad, but in the darkness of my bathroom it looked particularly grotesque.

The goggles didn't hurt my peripheral vision, although the hoodie did.

There were motorcycle helmets that had visors that didn't hurt peripheral vision. When I made more money I planned to get one, and maybe even some motorcycle armor. It wouldn't protect me from bullets but it would help in hand to hand combat.

Eventually I hoped to get actual Kevlar vests. There weren't any restrictions on minors buying armor in the state and you didn't even have to show ID. However, while cheap vests could be had for as little as a hundred and fifty dollars, police grade vests could be more than three thousand dollars.

In all, my costume was extremely cheap and looked it. Worse, it wouldn't protect me at all.

Without the phasing power I didn't have any particular skills at fighting, and I'd never been in a fight in my life if you didn't count being regularly hit by Sophia.

It wouldn't have been as bad if I'd been a Master; I'd looked up the PRT classifications. As a Master I could have allowed my minions to do the fighting for me and I wouldn't have had to do it all myself. I fantasized sometimes about having powers like that of Hellhound. I wasn't sure if she summoned the giant dog monsters she used or transformed them, but with minions like that I'd have been able to make a real difference.

As it was I was going to feel naked going out on my own. I hadn't even had enough money left to buy pepper spray, although I did manage to find a huge, heavy wrench in the basement. It was going to have to do.

With Sophia getting more and more vicious since her powers had disappeared, it was getting harder and harder not to fight back. As she had years of fighting experience, that was likely to result in my having broken bones unless I outed myself as the cape who had stolen her powers.

I felt on edge, and the urge to go out and do something even before I was fully prepared was almost unbearable.

All the studying online, looking up the local parahumans and parahuman laws wasn't going to help me much on the street.

I managed to hold off for a week, before I finally found myself giving in.

It had taken dad more than an hour to fall asleep. Fortunately I was able to slip soundlessly down the stairs in shadow form. I'd have gone straight through the wall; experimentation showed that I could have drifted downward from the second floor without getting hurt, but dad's bedroom was the one facing the back yard while mine faced the street.

I'd had unpleasant shocks trying to go through walls before; apparently Sophia's powers didn't work well with electricity. It made my initial plan to slip through walls and attack people a little harder, but I'd have to adapt.

It was seven blocks to Lord street, and at first I slipped down the alleyways. It wasn't impossible that I'd see crime here, but unlikely. I didn't want to be seen until I got some distance from home.

The last thing I wanted was to get dad killed because I was out trying to be a hero.

Even if anyone saw me, all they'd see from far away was a teenager in a hoodie. The pipe wrench I carried was almost four feet long, and I found myself using it like a cane as I got tired of carrying it. I'd need to rig up some kind of holder for it because carrying it around all night was going to be tiring.

Still, its solidity and weight gave me a confidence I wouldn't have had otherwise. I wouldn't have wanted to be out this late without it, or at least something like it.

As I walked through the darkness, I wondered how I was going to find crime. Velocity was able to speed through the city until he saw something. Other heroes probably had police scanners; the Protectorate definitely did.

What were the odds that I was even going to see anything? Even in a city like Brockton Bay there weren't crimes on every street corner. If there had been Alexandria or Legend or Eidolon would have been sent to clean house.

It seemed longer, walking in the silence than it did during the day, and I found myself alert to every little sound. I could hear dogs barking in the distance and the sound of cars from adjacent streets. The last thing I needed was to get mugged before my hero career even began.

Why was I doing this again? It wasn't like I had an offensive power and I couldn't even afford a crossbow like Sophia had, assuming that they'd sell it to a minor anyway.

Finally I reached Lord street. The market wasn't far, even though the stalls had all closed by ten. Walking through the abandoned market was eerie, like walking through a post-apocalyptic world where everyone had vanished. It felt like I was the only one alive.

The Merchants were the gang that had control of my neighborhood, which was a relief. Of all the gangs, they were the least dangerous, although that wasn't saying much. There were plenty of murders in dark alleys committed by merchants over drug deals gone bad, but at least they weren't as organized as the Empire or as vicious as Lung's gang.

As I left the Market behind, heading in the direction of the boatyard, I finally heard something I shouldn't have heard.

In an alley off the beaten path I saw two men beating up on what looked like a homeless man.

I hesitated. Someone who was truly heroic would call out for them to stop, giving them a chance to give up.

Unfortunately there were two of them and I couldn't even see if they were armed or not. I couldn't afford to give up the luxury of surprise.

I shifted into my shadow state, and in the darkness of the alleyway I was probably almost invisible. The men were preoccupied with what they were doing anyway and .it was easy to sneak up on them.

As I began to swing the pipe wrench, I became solid at the last minute hitting the man closest to me in the right shoulder. The shock of the impact almost made me drop the heavy wrench, but I heard a sickening crack in the man's shoulder. He screamed and staggered away, even as the other man turned and swung at me.

I'd thought the Merchants would have been too drugged out to be very alert, but these men seemed relatively aware of what they were doing.

The man who was uninjured swung a sock at me. From the look of it it was filled with quarter rolls and was what he had been using to beat the homeless man who was laying on the ground groaning.

The sock passed through me, and I had a moment to wonder if it was clean and if this meant I somehow had particles of dirty sock floating through my gut.

I swung at him, but he grabbed the wrench, almost pulling it out of my hand. It took a moment for me to phase the wrench out of his grasp, and that was enough for him to hit me in the upper part of my left arm with the sock. My entire arm instantly felt numb, and I panicked.

Slipping through the fence on the side, I found myself in someone's back yard. There weren't any motion sensor lights, for which I was grateful. There wasn't a dog, for which I was even more grateful.

The man that had attacked me apparently didn't want to quit. He was struggling to climb the fence. I waited, and the moment I saw his face over the top of the fence, I smashed him with the wrench. He fell backwards, groaning.

I pushed forward, through the fence and passing through his companion.

He grabbed for me, even though his shoulder didn't look any better than mine was.

I turned and rammed the wrench into his gut. He bent down groaning, even as I felt myself being grabbed from behind. The man I'd hit had his hands around my neck, and I gagged and struggled to breath for a moment before I remembered to shift into my shadow state.

Enraged, I stepped back and swung my pipe, hitting him in the back of the head with a satisfying crunch.

His friend lunged forward, only to get hit as well. He went down.

I swung the pipe wrench, which it him in the back of the thigh. I heard another cracking sound. I hit him again, and when I heard the other man stirring I hit him again.

Part of me wanted to keep hitting them both, but the sight of blood on my hand stopped me. If I continued I'd kill them, and my chances of ever becoming a hero would be gone forever.

It didn't look like either one of them was going to get up soon. I bent down to check; I was already regretting hitting them in the head. Head injuries could kill, even if it was a pipe that was swung by a girl.

They were both breathing, although I wasn't sure how much damage I had done.

I felt exhausted suddenly, even though the fight had only lasted for much less than a minute. I needed to start training; real fights would require that I have endurance.

"Are you all right?" I asked the man they had been attacking.

All he did was lay on the ground and groan.

I crouched down and rifled through the men's jackets. One of them had a cell phone; it was one of the new smart phones. It took longer than it should for me to figure out the interface; I'd only had flip phones before dad had banned them after mom's death.

Finally reaching the Brockton Bay police, I tried to speak in a deep voice.

"Two men were beating up a homeless man in the alley two streets north of the Market. All three of them need medical assistance."

"Are you a parahuman?" the dispatcher on the telephone asked. It was a required question because the PRT had jurisdiction over any case that had a parahuman even peripherally involved.

The last thing I wanted was to involve the PRT. They undoubtedly knew that Shadow Stalker no longer had her powers, and for a hero to suddenly appear with the exact same powers wouldn't require much of a leap for them to them to have some really pointed questions for me.

"Just a concerned citizen."

Before she could say anything, I ended the call.

I stared at the phone, wondering if I'd be able to get the telephone number for Skidmark or Squealer. They were able to track these things, weren't they?

A moment later the telephone in my hand rang. Looking at the number I realized that it was the police calling me back. I realized suddenly that I had probably left fingerprints on phone, so ignoring the ringing I frantically rubbed it on the sleeve of my hoodie. I dropped it on top of the man who I'd beaten unconscious, and I decided to get out as quickly as possible.

My arm was still numb, and I was sure it was going to be massively bruised in the morning. I'd have to remember to wear long sleeves, else Emma was going to start talking about me being a Merchant whore.

I grabbed my pipe wrench, which had blood on it. I rubbed it on the back of the first man's shirt trying to clean it off as well as I could. I started jogging out of the alley. The last thing I needed was for the police to catch me with a bloody pipe wrench, especially if the men were injured worse than I'd thought they were.

What was wrong with me? Before tonight I would have said I didn't have a violent bone in my body. I'd been attacked by Sophia before, and this simmering rage hadn't been boiling beneath the surface waiting to get out.

Was there something wrong with me? Was it the powers? Was this why Capes seemed destined to fight each other all the time. Maybe Sophia's power was damaged somehow?

I had tried pushing the power onto other people to see if I could get rid of it, but I had no idea if it was even possible, much less how to do it. It certainly hadn't worked when I'd tried it on Greg Vedar.

If I was going to go out again I had a lot more work to do. I had beaten two men viciously and I wasn't certain whether this was going to happen every time I went out or if it was a one off thing. A taser and pepper spray might be the kindest thing I could get for the people I was attacking.

Also, the pipe wrench hurt my hands when I was hitting people. I needed something lighter and possibly less likely to crush skulls.

Waking up the next morning I realized that my entire body felt like one bruise. My shoulder hurt and I had stretched muscles I'd never used before. Looking at myself in the bathroom showed a massive bruise on my upper left arm. I was lucky it hadn't been broken, and my arm didn't feel like it moved as well as it should.

I'd have to be careful with it, especially in gym class until it healed.

Rushing out before I was ready had been foolish. I'd never been athletic, and just a minute of actual combat had left me exhausted. Carrying the pipe wrench all the way home had been excruciating, especially since I couldn't change arms.

I needed to start running for endurance, and I needed to work on my upper body strength. The fact that I was so relatively weak was probably the only reason the men I'd attacked hadn't died, but if they'd been more prepared I'd have been in trouble.

"Taylor," Dad asked as I slowly came down the stairs. "Are you feeling all right?"

"I'm feeling a little achey," I admitted. Hopefully he'd think it was from the flu and not because I'd been beating up random thugs.

As much as I hated Sophia, the thought that she'd been doing this since she was thirteen with nothing more than a crossbow and a gut full of anger had to be respected.

"You don't have a fever," he said, walking up to me and putting a hand to my forehead.

"I overdid it in PE yesterday," I said. "Got a little competitive, tripped and fell. Didn't even feel it until this morning."

"Was it the bullies again?" he asked, his face darkening. He'd spent more than a year completely in the dark about what had happened and I could tell that he felt guilty.

I shook my head and smiled. "For once no. This time it was actually my own fault."

He stared at me for a long moment, as though trying to see if he believed me. Finally he relaxed and asked, "You need to see a doctor?"

We both knew we didn't have the money to see a doctor.

"I'll be fine," I said, shaking my head.

It was Saturday so I'd have a couple of days to heal up before I had to head back to Winslow.

"I'm supposed to meet Kurt and Lacey at the Market; Lacey is buying things for a wedding and Kurt wants someone to talk to while he's holding all the packages. Would you like to come?"

I hesitated. I hadn't been close to dad for a long time, not since mom died and he'd spiraled into a deep depression. We'd hardly spent any time together, becoming strangers in our own house.

While I really wanted to do nothing more than go to bed and obsess over my sudden violent streak, I knew that I needed to spend time with my father.

"Window shopping? That fits my budget!," I said, forcing a smile. "Let me get dressed."

An hour later we were walking along the market with Kurt and Lacey. It was very different now that it was filled with people than it had when it was deserted last night.

Lacey tried to get me interested in what they were buying. I smiled and tried to pretend to e involved, but mostly I kept thinking about the sounds the pipe had made when it had hit the men the night before.

Was I as much of a thug at heart as Sophia? Had I enjoyed hurting those men?

Was this what she felt when she was hurting me?

I heard the sounds of screaming before I saw what was wrong.

Walls of stone were rising at both ends of the market, trapping everyone inside. A massive fireball appeared over our heads and I could feel the heat.

"Everybody get down!" a tall black man said.

There were two other men with him. One was a skinhead, but the tattoos he had weren't anything like what I saw with the Empire 88.

It didn't make sense. None of the gangs would be bold enough to attack the Market; the Protectorate would have to respond in force.

None of them were in costume either. They weren't even bothering covering their faces.

"Get down on the ground and take out your wallets slow and easy like. Anybody tries anything funny and we'll see how you like being barbecued or buried alive."

The skinhead grabbed a motorcycle and lifted it over his head. He threw it against a wall where it fell.

My mind raced. I didn't have my costume and with dad here I couldn't get involved. The chances of him getting injured or killed were too great. I decided that I had to stay still and wait for the Protectorate, even though it grated on my.

"You!" the skinhead said, pointing at me.

The others pointed at several other people.

"Start collecting wallets," he said. He threw a reusable shopping bag at me. "And make it quick. You wouldn't want me to have to start breaking some bones on daddy, would you?"

He pointed to Kurt instead of dad, so at least he wasn't that observant.

I could probably gain the powers of at least one of them when I handed them the bag, but doing it in front of a crowd of hundreds wouldn't exactly be doing my secret identity any good.

After that I'd have to deal with the other two, and if they threw a fireball at me and I managed to slip into my shadow state, the people behind me would still get hurt.

I stood up and grabbed the bag, gritting my teeth.

"Not as afraid as everybody else, are you girlie?" the skinhead asked. "Well you should be."

I felt a sudden wave of terror; looking up I saw a familiar figure in a white gown. Glory girl was floating above the Market, and beside her were Kid Win and Aegis.

The skinhead looked up and snorted.

"What is this, Halloween?"


	3. Hostage

Before the heroes could demand their surrender, a massive ball of fire flashed toward them. Kid Win screamed even though he was behind Aegis and partially protected.

"Crazy kids playing dress up," the skin head snickered. He glanced at me. "Keep collecting, darlin, or we'll give your dad the same as we gave those idiots up in the air."

A flash of white was all I saw as Glory Glory was there suddenly. He went flying backwards, smashing into a stand.

She turned to grab the firestarter, who bathed her in flames. I ducked as the heat of the fire washed over my skin. People screamed around me, and they started to scramble away.

Glory Girl's aura wasn't making things any easier. I felt fear washing over me, and the people around me began to panic, running for the walls and pounding on them seeking help. I saw several people fall and it looked like some of them were being trampled.

She vanished suddenly as a hole appeared in the pavement under her. As she fell into the hole, the ground reformed in the space where she had been, and for a moment there was silence.

A moment later, the pavement exploded outward. I saw pieces of rubble flying in all directions. I was hit in the arm and I grimaced. I dropped the bag and scrambled back as Glory Girl rose out of the hole.

Aegis had vanished; apparently Kid Win had been injured and he was getting him to safety.

The earth controller went flying, and it didn't look like he was going to be getting up anytime soon.

The skinhead was pulling himself out of the rubble. He was grinning. "I don't know what you're doing, girl, but keep it up. All you're doing is making me stronger."

He raced forward and he punched Glory Girl. She was the one who went flying this time, all the way through the wall.

This left a hole, and people began to race to be the ones to escape.

"Stop!" the skinhead yelled. "Or we'll just kill all of you!"

I bent down and grabbed the bag. Stepping toward him, I thrust the bag into his hand. "Here! Take it! Just leave us alone!"

As I handed it to him, I deliberately brushed his hand. I felt a sudden rush of pleasure and I took his power. His power felt different than Sophia's had; cleaner somehow.

"What did you...?" he asked, looking stunned, even as a flash of white flashed by me.

He went flying through the air, hitting the wall again with a sickening crack. This time there was a splash of red, and he didn't look like he was ever going to be moving again.

Without his power he was just a normal person, and Glory Girl had hit him with full force. I suddenly realized that I'd just collaborated in the death of a man.

The fire controller reached down and grabbed my dad. He put his hand on his face. He was a tall man with big hands, and his hand covered most of my father's face.

"Everybody is going to calm down or I'm going to bake this guy's head from the inside out."

Glory Girl didn't look like she'd even heard a word he'd said. She was staring at the body on the other side of the street, her face having turned white as a sheet.

She was afraid, I realized, and a moment later I realized that I could feel the fear of everyone for blocks in every direction. It was exhilarating. The fear fed my strength; I knew it instinctively. Hundreds of people around me and all of them were afraid. Strength surged into me, and I felt invincible. These were the powers that had launched Glory Girl through a wall. With these powers I could do almost anything.

"Let my father go," I said. I stared at the man for a long moment. "You don't have to do this."

If he hurt my father his companion wouldn't be the only splash of red on the wall. I'd kill him in front of seven hundred witnesses and there wouldn't be enough of him to scrape off the sidewalk.

"Anybody moves and he's dead!" the man said. He jerked his head in the direction of the hole in the wall Glory Girl had made.

"We're going through that hole. Anybody tries to stop us and its all over."

"Take me instead," I said impulsively. "He's got a bad leg and he'll slow you down."

Dad stared at me and shook his head. He didn't realize that the moment I touched the man it would all be over. The man didn't even have a gun, and even if he did I'd just slip away into the shadow state.

The man smirked as he looked at me. "You think Blondie won't attack me while I'm handing him off?"

"I don't think she's going to be attacking anybody for a while," I said. I could feel her terror now that she'd actually killed someone. She simply stood, frozen, and I wasn't sure that she was aware of anything else that was going on. I didn't receive any understanding of the reason for her fear; was she worried about jail, the Birdcage or just that people would look down on her?

Where were the rest of the Protectorate?

"You think people will care about an old man?" I asked. I'd apologize to dad later. "A young girl, now that's a hostage."

I took a step toward him. Five more would be all it took and then it would be all over. One touch and...

"Get back!" he said, and he started dragging my father toward the hole in the wall.

My father grimaced as the man's hand tightened around his neck, but he didn't struggle as he was dragged away.

I took a step toward them, only to have a small ball of fire explode at my feet. I stepped back and started thinking. With the strength I had now I should be able to leap toward them and hit them both before the man could react. The problem was that I risked hurting Dad.

They reached the wall, and the man looked cautiously around the corner. My father took that opportunity to suddenly become dead weight, dropping to the ground even as a familiar white costume reached out and tapped the man.

He froze, and Dad scrambled away.

"It's all right!" Clockblocker said, stepping around the corner. "Everything is going to be all..."

He stopped as he saw the skinhead's body and all the blood.

Dad scrambled to his feet and headed for the rest of us even as PRT agents came rushing through the gap in the wall.

Glory Girl still hadn't moved.

"We just have to get your statement. It'll help with the investigation."

The man in the PRT uniform was only one of twenty who were doing similar things to the people in the area. The skinhead had been doused in containment foam and dragged off, and the earthmover had been taken away on a stretcher under heavy guard.

"There's nothing we can tell you that we haven't already told you."

"There wasn't a reason that your daughter was chosen to take wallets from people?" The man asked. "You're sure you never met any of those men?"

I shook my head. It almost sounded like he was accusing me of being an accomplice. After everything else the Protectorate had done, this seemed like exactly the sort of thing they would do.

The fear that had given me so much power was almost all gone, but there were still undercurrents, enough that I was stronger than I should have been, even if well within human norms.

"He was planning to blow my Dad's head off and you're accusing us?"

"It's a common tactic for criminals to have accomplices in the crowd that they pretend to hold hostage." the man said. I couldn't see his face because of the mask, which just made me more irritable.

"Why would you have two accomplices and leave one of them behind?" I asked.

"I just have to ask the questions, ma'am," he said. "I think that'll be all we need. We will get in contact with you again; we may need you to testify at the trial."

I wondered if Glory Girl was going to have a trial or if they were just going to use this to force her into the Wards.

I wasn't sure how to feel about my part in the man's death. I hadn't meant to do it any more than Glory Girl had, but now that I thought about it, stealing someone's powers in a Cape fight was just as dangerous as stealing a flier's powers in mid-air.

"Come on, Taylor," Dad said, grabbing my arm.

I winced. The shrapnel from the pavement exploding when Glory Girl had come out of the street had hit the same arm the thug had hit with his makeshift sap the night before.

Before I could do anything, Dad pulled up my sleep and hissed as he saw the huge bruise on my arm.

The PRT trooper was still there, and he immediately stepped forward. "You didn't say you'd been injured."

I wondered frantically if he could tell that the first wound was already hours old.

"I got hit when Glory Girl was coming out of the street," I said. It was unfortunate that I couldn't feed off my own fear.

"Panacea is helping the victims," the man said.

Several people had been injured by Glory Girl's actions. Undoubtedly New Wave was having Panacea heal people as a way of reducing their chances of being sued and to reduce the bad press Glory Girl's manslaughter charge was going to create.

The PRT agent led us to a Market stall that had been commandeered to form a triage center.

"This one got injured by shrapnel," the agent said. He handed the new agent a sheet with my name and contact information on it.

A different PRT agent pulled me aside and before I could say anything, he pulled my sleeve up and started taking pictures.

I felt a sudden surge of anxiety. Forensic examiners could tell if an injury had already started healing, couldn't they?

It was a pity that I apparently couldn't feed off my own fear, or I'd have been able to bench press a motorcycle. The power didn't seem to have any sort of regeneration effect either.

"Are you injured anywhere else?" the agent asked. I couldn't even tell if they were male or female, what with the mask.

I shook my head, afraid they were going to ask me to take off my shirt.

He glanced at his pad. "It looks like she's just finishing up with the last one. Why don't you go in with her?"

Before I could say anything Dad pulled me into the room.

"Shrapnel from your sister," the PRT agent said.

Panacea looked exhausted. Undoubtedly she was worried sick about her sister, but she'd been stuck here dealing with the injured while the rest of her family was dealing with the mess the skinhead's death had created.

"Do I have your permission to heal you?" she asked. She barely looked up at me.

"Yes," my father said before I had a chance to reply.

I froze in sudden terror. What if I stole her power when she touched me and couldn't give it back? Would anyone trust someone who had depowered Panacea?

She leaned forward and all I could think was how much I didn't want to take her power.

Don't take it, don't take it, don't take it.

Her hand was cool on my skin. I could feel her power just under the surface of hers, but I realized that I had a choice in whether to take it or not.

That was a relief for more reasons than one. There were monstrous capes out there, people who had powers that permanently deformed them. The last thing that I wanted was to take a power that I couldn't get rid of. I could end up looking like Crawler!

A moment later the pain in my arm was gone. The aches and pains that I'd been ignoring were gone as well.

For some reason my vision had gone blurry.

"Um..." I said.

"I fixed your eyes," she said, staring up at me. "It's the least I could do. I can put it back if you want me to."

She was staring oddly at me, and as I pulled off the glasses the world sprang into focus, clearer than I'd had even with my glasses. I wondered if she could see something strange about me, maybe even if I had powers. While everyone said she couldn't do brains, that didn't mean that she couldn't see brains.

"Thanks," I said.

The bruise on my arm was gone, and Dad thanked her profusely.

I could touch other capes without stealing their powers! That was a major relief. I'd been worrying that I'd accidentally brush by a hero in their secret identity and steal their powers without even meaning to.

He dragged me out of the tent and Kurt and Lacey met us.

"Are you all right?" Lacey asked.

I nodded, unsure of whether she was talking to me or Dad.

"I think we've had enough for the evening," Dad said. "I think we need to head off."

Kurt and Lacey looked almost relieved. After all, what did someone say about a horrifying trauma that had happened less than forty five minutes in the past?

From the look on Dad's face, I suspected that we were going to have a talk about it when we got home, though.

The ride home was made in silence.

He didn't say anything until we got into the house. The moment he turned and locked the door behind him he turned to me.

"Take me instead?" he demanded. "What were you thinking?"

"I was thinking I didn't want you to get hurt!" I said. "Do you really think he was going to let you go?"

I could feel his fear; it wasn't anything like it had been on the street, but there were still traces all over him. He stank of it, and it shamed me to realize that I enjoyed the sensation.

Would I become addicted to making people afraid? What kind of person would that make me?

"And what if he'd taken your offer?" he asked. "How do you think I'd feel if you'd been the one who'd been killed?"

"I wouldn't have been killed," I said.

He shook his head. "I thought I was immortal at your age, but I'd have thought you knew better. After what happened to your mother..."

"That's not fair!" I scowled. "Don't bring Mom into this."

"Shouldn't I?" he asked. "What am I supposed to think when my daughter asked a terrorist to make her a hostage?"

"I had a plan!" I said. "Everything would have been all right."

"What plan could you have possibly had that wouldn't have ended up with you dead?" he asked. "And don't say you'd have gotten away from him. He was strong...not parahuman strong, but the guy was six and a half feet of muscle."

His voice was rising rapidly, and I found my own temper rising to match. He was a good father when he wasn't moping around in despair over my mother's death. However, he had a temper, something I'd thought that I hadn't inherited. However, since taking Shadow Stalker's powers my temper had been close to the surface, harder to control.

I wondered how hard it would be to make Emma and Madison and the others afraid, enough to make me strong enough to...no.

I was better than that.

"I'd have gotten away," I said. "And everything would have been fine if you'd just cooperated."

It was a stupid statement, something I realized the moment that I said it. After all, it hadn't been Dad's choice to go with the man. He hadn't been given a choice.

"Do you think I want to lose both of the women in my life?" Dad asked.

I froze.

We'd never really talked about the massive hole that mom's death had left in our family. We'd just gone through the motions, as though if we kept at it long enough life would start being good again.

It never had.

"I'd have been fine," I said. I could tell that he wasn't going to accept that. He'd thought I was in danger, maybe even that I was a little suicidal.

I hadn't wanted to tell him, not this early, but the look in his eyes, and the fact that I could feel the fear in him growing made me realize that I didn't have a choice.

Before he could say another word, I shifted into my shadow state and stepped through the end table by the door.

"I'm a cape."

He stared at me, his mouth open. All the anger he'd been building up seemed to dissipate in the space of a moment. Thankfully, the fear did as well, although there was a slight undercurrent.

"When did this happen?"

"The Locker," I said. "That's how Capes are made...all of them. One really shitty day. I think that's why most of us are so screwed up. We're the walking wounded."

He grimaced and came toward me. A moment later he grabbed me and enveloped me in a hug.

He hadn't hugged me since before Mom died, and I'd forgotten how good it felt. I found myself reaching up and hugged him back.

We held each other for a long time before he spoke again.

"So when are you going to join the Wards?"


	4. Victory

"I'm not joining the Wards," I said flatly.

Stepping back from me, Dad looked me in the eye. "You've wanted to be a hero since you were a little girl. I know better than to think you'll have powers and just do nothing with them."

I shrugged uncomfortably.

He scowled. "Capes don't last long on their own. A few months on average and then they are either dead or they're working for one of the villain groups. Do you want that?"

"I can't." I shook my head. "Not now...not ever."

"Why?"

Silent for a moment, I gathered my thoughts. "Shadow Stalker is one of the wards. She's also one of the girls who put me in the locker."

He stared at me, shocked into silence.

"I always wondered why they got away with everything they did to me...why the teachers looked the other way no matter how bad it got. Principal Blackwell was covering for her, on orders from the PRT."

"Maybe they just didn't know?" he asked weakly.

I snorted. "Maybe they didn't care, but that's not the only reason I can't join. You didn't ask me about my powers yet."

"You just showed me...:"

Shaking my head I said, "Who has powers like that in the wards?"

"Shadow Stalker?"

I nodded. "I steal powers...permanently. The first time was an accident. Sophia was pushing me around and I stole her power. They don't know it's me yet, but if I sign up with them it's only a matter of time."

"Who else?"

"The skinhead...right before he was hit by Glory Girl."

Dad winced.

"What do you think they'll do to someone who can steal the one thing that makes them all special?" I asked. "Being forced to join the wards is the best case scenario. It would be just as easy for me to have an "accident" while I'm being transported."

"They're heroes...they wouldn't..."

I understood his feeling of disillusionment. I'd felt it when I realized that the people I'd idolized my entire life had feet of clay. Was I overcompensating too far the other way? I couldn't be sure. It was possible that they might be sympathetic to my cause. Maybe they really hadn't known about what had happened to me.

"Even if they are, joining the Wards wouldn't keep me safe," I said.

"The gangs wouldn't attack the wards," Dad said. "That's the perfect way to get a kill order."

"What do you think the PRT would have me doing if I worked for them?" I asked. "Nobody would even need the Birdcage if I was around. One touch and the bad guy is no stronger than any other person. And I'd be stronger."

"You could make a real difference.," he said. "Change the balance of power."

"You think the villains wouldn't understand that?" I asked. "I'd be getting stronger and stronger and eventually nobody would be able to stop me. I might get to be as strong as an Endbringer. There would be no way they could stop me."

He stared at me for a long moment. "I'm not sure I see the problem with that."

"The only way to stop me would be before I had a chance to get too powerful. Capes don't usually try to kill other capes, but I'd be an exception. You don't even hear the sound of a sniper bullet before it's already dropped you. I doubt I'd survive the press release introducing me."

"You've thought about this," he said. "So what do you do?"

"Nobody can know I have this power," I said. "But there's a chance they might find out sooner or later."

Part of wanting to be a hero had been wanting the fame and acknowledgment that went with it. Working in the shadows wasn't going to work forever.

"If you start using powers that have vanished, people are going to know."

"I'm going to have to combine powers," I said. "Use them in unusual ways and make people think those are the only ways I can use them. To do that, I'll have to steal even more powers. I need money and information."

I'd already been thinking about ways to use the powers I had. With my ability to sense fear, I could detects the location of everyone in my range of several blocks who was feeling any. Other people would be invisible to me, but under the right circumstances it would be perfect.

I could even use fear to help me detect lies. That was part of what a lie detector did, after all. It wouldn't work for a sociopath or for someone who wasn't afraid of being caught out, but it would make people think I had some kind of a thinker ability.

With a little augmented strength I could launch myself in the air and then when I went into a shadow state I could jump far farther than I could with either set of powers alone.

I suspected there would be other things I could do if I thought about them long enough. Tactics and strategies would change as I gained new powers.

"So what's your plan?" he asked.

"I have to get strong enough that it's too late by the time they're realizing what's happening," I admitted. "Strong enough that nobody can stop me."

It was a daunting task. If the Protectorate got a kill order on me Legend could kill me from miles away before I even knew he was there. Alexandria could fight from a distance. Eidolon could just create a power that would put me out.

They wouldn't put me in the Birdcage. The chances of me stealing the powers of many of the strongest capes in the world and then using them to escape were too great. If they wanted me dead I needed powers to counter it, and I wouldn't find everything I needed in Brockton Bay.

It was going to require a lot of research, even as I trained myself.

"I probably need martial arts training," I said.

"You can steal their powers with a touch," Dad said. "Why would you need to know how to fight?"

Remembering the fight I'd been in with the two gang members I shuddered. I could have killed those two men; for all I knew now I had. I hadn't checked the web to find out in part because I wasn't sure I wanted to know.

"I have to touch skin," I said. "And most cape outfits don't show much. Even if they do, I have to actually hit them and I doubt they'll be sitting still. Plus, there's a lot of unpowered goons out there..."

"This is going to cost," he said. "Probably more than we have."

"There's classes at the community center for fifty dollars a month," I said. "The better schools are closer to one hundred fifty a month."

He winced. It wasn't like we were swimming in cash.

I wished suddenly that I'd taken money from the gang members I'd beaten. I hadn't thought of it at the time and didn't want to seem like a villain, but there wasn't any legitimate way I could think of to use my powers to make money.

Super strength was mostly useless in the business world; the Unions had gotten legislation preventing capes from taking union jobs.

Not that I minded; the Hebert house was staunchly pro-union.

Walking through walls seemed suited only for crime. It certainly didn't seem useful for anything else, unless I somehow started a service for people who'd left their keys in their cars.

Even if I did...didn't car doors have all sorts of electrical equipment running through them? I'd have to climb through the windows, and what would I stand on to get there? Maybe I could go through the trunk?

"I'll figure something out," I said. "Let me tell you about my other power."

I'd spent most of the day on Sunday with dad. After what had happened he hadn't felt safe letting me out of his sight, especially now that he knew I was a cape.

As though I'd go out on her own on a Sunday...hardly anything happened on Sundays.

One more day hadn't been enough to emotionally prepare me for returning to Winslow. Even with my new powers I couldn't face Emma or Sophia. If I attacked them without powers they'd have the school accuse _me_ of being the bully.

Besides...Sophia had years of skills at fighting, even without her powers. I doubted that I'd even be able to get my hands on her.

I'd have a better chance with my powers, but the minute I revealed myself they'd call the PRT. They'd probably make me out to be attacking the school. The PRT would treat me like a school shooter, and I'd have to depower heroes if I was going to escape.

After that I probably wouldn't last a week.

My best bet would be to get incontrovertible evidence...but that would likely require me to get video footage...and that would require money, or at least some kind of a Tinker power. I might be able to sneak into Blackwell's office and look for incriminating paperwork, but I wasn't sure that she'd leave anything laying around.

I had more power now than I'd ever had, and yet was still helpless.

As I approached the school, though, I was startled to realize that I felt low levels of fear all through the school. It wasn't anything like what I'd felt during the attack on the market; it was a ghost of a sensation, but it was pervasive and there was enough of it that I could track individual people moving throughout the school.

It shouldn't have surprised me. After all, Winslow had made me afraid every day that I'd gone there. There were dozens of reasons for the other students to be afraid. I was hardly the only one to be bullied, although none of the others had been treated as badly as I had been, at least as far as I'd heard.

Even the students that weren't bullied had to deal with the gangs, with tests, with fears of being ridiculed and losing their place in the social order.

Strength was flowing into me. It certainly wasn't enough to make me a parahuman; no one person had enough fear to make much of a difference, but there were three thousand students in Winslow. Even the mere shadows of fear they were exuding added up.

I wasn't parahuman, but I was probably stronger than Sophia now.

I'd forgotten how pleasurable it was to feel the fear of others, and that worried me. It was one thing to take advantage of the fear around me to help me do things to help other people. It was something altogether to become addicted to it, to start making people fear so that I could get my next hit.

Was that how the skinhead had gotten to the point where he was robbing people in broad daylight on a Saturday morning?

Was that how Jack Slash and the Slaughterhouse Nine had gotten started?

I'd have to be careful that I didn't let any of this go to my head...and I'd have to be careful of what powers I stole. If I stole the powers of a cape with physical deformations, would that make me deformed? I could imagine myself ending up as someone like Crawler, an amalgam of several monstrous capes, growing more and more mutated and unable to live around other people.

Copying someone like Canary would give me feathers, something that wouldn't make keeping a secret identity easy.

Even someone like Lung would be problematic. He transformed whenever he got into conflict. What would happen if I was in the middle of school when Emma lit into me?

Winslow would burn to the ground.

The thought of the expression on Emma's face as I turned into a dragon was enormously tempting, but the bullet Miss Militia would undoubtedly put in my head was much less so.

So I started the school day with a sense of trepidation. Now that I knew all the teachers were intentionally contributing to my being bullied instead of just being incompetent, I felt even more trapped. It had made school even worse over the past few weeks.

It was hard for me to look at my fellow students in the eye considering that not one of them had protested my being put in the locker or even went to call a teacher. The fact that I passed out should have made at least one of them concerned.

Feeling their fear now did make me feel oddly better, though. The thought that they were all cowards instead of actively hating me didn't make me happy, but it at least made me a little more hopeful.

Nothing was done to me the first two periods, one of which I didn't even have any of my tormentors in. I'd used that time to look up the news after finishing my computer work. I was relieved to discover that I hadn't killed wither of the two Merchants on my first night out, even though I'd badly injured both of them.

As I was leaving my class, however, I felt a clump of people who had feelings of low level fear approaching me. To my surprise it was Emma, Madison and Sophia and their hangers on.

They surrounded me, and I saw Mrs. Knott look in my direction then head off in the other direction.

"Got contacts, Taylor?" Emma asked.

My eyes had been fixed by Panacea...presumably in an attempt to keep dad from suing New Wave. I looked better without my glasses, so of course Emma would have to comment on them.

"I guess I know what you spent your first paycheck on," Emma said.

"What?"

"I wouldn't have thought you were following in your mother's footsteps, Taylor," Emma said. "Becoming a villain's henchwoman."

"What?" I asked stupidly.

Julia called out, "You didn't think any of us would be at the Market when you and your bosses terrorized everyone?"

Oh.

"They literally caught you holding the bag," Madison said. "How stupid can you possibly be."

Weirdly, all of them had the same low level anxiety that I senses in almost everyone else, although I could tell they weren't anxious about this.

"Pretty clever pretending to have your dad taken hostage," Emma said. "Trying to throw attention off of you."

"So am I stupid or am I clever?" I asked peevishly.

"Pretty clever of your bosses," Emma said. "Although considering they were caught ten minutes into their big debut, I guess they were pretty stupid too."

None of them believed anything they were saying. I could tell that, and I knew they they knew. There wasn't any point in my staying around.

"I think it's important that the school knows what kind of criminal we have here," Emma said. "After all, there are innocent children at risk here."

Knowing Blackwell, she'd find some way to punish me just to keep on Sophia's good side.

"If I was really a villain's henchwoman, do you really think we'd be standing here today?" I asked. I saw Emma flinch at that, with a small increase in her anxiety and I wasn't sure why.

Sophia slammed me into a locker. "Is that supposed to be a threat?"

I'd meant that I probably would have dropped out of school, but now that she mentioned it...

"It'd mean that I had real power, not like somebody who was washed up," I whispered in Sophia's ear.

She flinched. Losing her powers had to be devastating. However, I couldn't let her know that I knew...that way would only lead to badness.

"How long has it been since you won a track meet?" I asked. "And what happens when you leave school? You aren't exactly a rocket scientist. You aren't good enough to make it in college sports and there's no way you could make it on your academic skills."

I could feel her anxiety rising at what I said, and it was like ambrosia to me. Making Sophia afraid, even a little was intoxicating

I leaned forward. "You'll be lucky if the Merchants offer you a chance to be their whore."

Sophia had only one way to deal with her fear, and that was to hit it. I knew that, and yet, buoyed by the fear I felt around me I found myself not as afraid as I once would have been.

When she punched, I punched back.

Sitting in Blackwell's office, I knew I'd gotten the worse of the fight. I was probably going to have two black eyes and I felt bruised all over, but it still wasn't as bad as my fight with the Merchants.

I was a little tougher than I should have been because of all the fear in the air, and yet I'd managed to avoid outing myself as a cape.

Sophia was going to have a black eye, however, and I wished her luck explaining it to the Protectorate. I felt a strange sense of satisfaction at that. Maybe the aggressiveness I was getting from my new powers wasn't an entirely bad thing.

"We have a no tolerance policy for bullying, Taylor," Blackwell said, frowning at me. "Or for criminal activity."

She'd spoken to the other girls at first, leaving them in a group so they could get their stories prepared before talking to me.

I chuckled bitterly. "Really? You want me to call the PRT?"

A sudden spike in her anxiety made me lean forward. Maybe the Protectorate _didn't_ know what their errant ward was doing.

"After all, they were the ones who investigated what happened with me and cleared me. I'm going to have to talk to them again before the trial, and I'm sure they'd be happy to know that you are so...supportive."

She was actually sweating. Feeling her fear was even more intoxicating than Sophia's.

"They wouldn't be interested in schoolgirl squabbles."

"Oh?" I asked. "It was serious crimes a moment ago."

I narrowed my eyes and leaned forward. "What is it that you don't want the PRT investigating?"

"We aren't talking about me," she said quickly. "We are talking about you. Sophia would be in her rights to have you charged with assault and battery."

"She won't though," I snickered. "Because it would make her look weak. Are the gangs paying you off?"

Her anxiety lessened.

I couldn't let her think I really knew anything, but I also couldn't let her have the upper hand.

"Or are you protecting a parahuman?" I asked. Her anxiety spiked again. "You don't have as much of a poker face as you think you do."

"Blackmail is a serious crime," she said.

"Are you saying you have something to be blackmailed about?" I asked. I smirked. "I'm sure the PRT would be interested in knowing that you are shielding someone. Is it one of the girls who are bullying me?"

Her anxiety spiked even more. If I hadn't known Sophia was a parahuman before I'd have been certain of it now.

She'd been planning on expelling me, but in the end I only got one day of detention.

Even better, Sophia got the same. I was going to pay for that sooner or later, but for the moment I basked in the feeling of victory...especially when I saw the expression on her face when she learned she was going to be punished too.

Victory was sweet.


	5. Plummet

Leaving the stew of high school anxiety and angst that was Winslow, I suddenly realized that my power had been reducing my pain. Without that intoxicating fear, the true pain I should have been feeling all along set in.

Being a brute apparently came with a measure of pain tolerance. Unfortunately the power wasn't increasing my healing as far as I could tell.

I grimaced as I went home. Telling Dad wasn't going to be easy. I'd lectured him on how important it was for me to stay under the radar and the first thing I do with my powers was hit Sophia in the face and almost out myself to Blackwell while blackmailing her.

My powers were doing something to my personality, and it wasn't just the pleasure I got from scaring people. I'd never been this aggressive before. Was it something intrinsic to Sophia's powers, or was I getting parts of people's personalities along with their powers?

If that was the case, the fact that I'd sworn to myself to only target villains was going to be a problem. Combining the personalities of Brockton Bay's villains in a person with my power was going to create someone as dangerous as any of the Slaughterhouse Nine.

Of course, I could be wrong. It was possible that I'd never been aggressive because I'd never had any real power before. Now that I did...well...that idea didn't paint a very flattering picture of me.

All capes seemed drawn to conflict. I'd been studying the boards almost obsessively since I gained my powers, at least when I could make it to the library or when our glacially slow computer at home cooperated.

Now that I didn't have to hide my browser history from Dad (except for certain steamy Cape fics that I wouldn't want anyone knowing that I read), I could work from home except that I didn't want anything traced back to me.

Realistically, I needed my own computer, something that wouldn't be linked to me. Everything needed money. The best way for me to get that would be to steal it from the criminals. If I was going to steal their powers, why not their money as well?

With Dad's help I could presumably get anything I needed easily. Having an adult who was obviously not the young girl going out attacking people buy things might be helpful.

The problem was that I had no idea where the villains kept their drugs or their money. They obviously didn't advertise, and my fear sense wouldn't help me either. Presumably the buildings would be well fortified and the people inside would feel well secured.

I might have a chance if I stumbled across one of Lung's brothels. Rumor had it that a lot of the girls there weren't there willingly. It was the one area the ABB was worse than the Empire or the Merchants. The Merchants generally used women who were already addicts; they didn't need unwilling converts. The Empire used prostitutes, but most of them were presumably willing, although that could be just propaganda.

Lung was powerful enough not to care what anyone thought.

Raiding an ABB safehouse would be suicidally stupid though. After all, I'd already decided that stealing Lung's power would make my secret identity impossible to keep, and even if I wanted it, he'd probably light me on fire long before I got to him.

His regenerative abilities would have been handy at the moment, although even that would have outed me. Having a split lip at the beginning of a conversation and being whole at the end of it wasn't normal by any means.

I could try following Merchants, even though I was unsure of my ability to be stealthy. Sophia had presumably had years of experience running along rooftops and staying out of sight, but I didn't have enhanced agility. I'd learned today that Sophia was still as fast and deadly without her powers, something that I would require years of experience to match.

There was an Empire cape who had the ability to permanently steal skills...against normal people it would be a horrible invasion, but stealing Sophia's combat abilities?

It would have a certain sense of justice to it. Plus, it would make it much more difficult for her to keep bullying people she thought were weak.

Unfortunately I didn't know where to find the cape in question. I couldn't even remember whether his costume would have places for me to touch skin. If he had all kinds of martial arts skills (and if I'd had his power I'd have every skill I could get my hands on), it was likely I'd never even lay a hand on him.

What I wouldn't give for a thinker power...another one I guess, since my anger sense could be considered one.

No one could read minds, except possibly the Simurgh, but some capes could do the next best thing. Of course those were the kinds of capes who would see me coming from a mile away.

I wondered why I was always so negative. Glory Girl had never seemed negative at all...of course, nobody had heard anything from her over the past two days. I felt guilty about that, but there was no way to absolve her of guilt without revealing myself to the world...and that would most likely get me a bullet in the skull.

It was probably the result of more than a year of bullying. I'd read about something called learned helplessness once...rats in an electrified cage who had a way out would quickly escape, but leaving them no escape and torture them long enough and they would simply give up. Even when an escape was offered they'd simply let themselves be electrified over and over.

I'd been a little like those rats. Maybe I was just finally seeing a way out.

It'd have to be the Merchants, I decided. They were the only ones less likely to notice me following them, and they didn't have a lot of cape power anyway. Even better, their capes didn't wear a lot of clothes, so if I should find them...I always wanted to be a tinker.

Wandering around wasn't going to help much, but the last thing I wanted to do was ask some of the stoner kids at school where to buy drugs. The rumor mill at school was notoriously bad and if it got around to Sophia and Emma they'd use it against me.

There were several kids who were rumored to be dealers; I considered following one of them. The problem with that was that they were probably only dealers part of the time, and the rest of the time they were just regular kids. The last hing I wanted to do was sit outside some stoner's house waiting to be recognized on the street.

I stopped as a new idea occurred to me. I _did_ have a thinker power, and there was a way to use it to find what I needed. I wouldn't be able to find the storehouses they kept their drugs, but I'd be able to find dealers and drug houses where it was distributed easily enough.

After all, the dealers wouldn't be afraid, but the customers _would_. There had to be a certain anxiety in approaching an illegal transaction that would fade after the transaction was made. Better yet, if I went late at night, most people would be asleep, and that would make the fear stand out even more.

The thing about Brockton Bay that I was only now starting to realize was that I'd never found an area completely devoid of fear. People were afraid of losing their jobs, or of not getting another job. They were afraid of the gangs or of their own spouses. Everyone was afraid of the Endbringers.

I'd been so wrapped in my own misery for so long that I hadn't realized how miserable everyone else was. I wondered how much better it would be in a city where the economy actually worked.

The power I was getting now was only background noise, nothing like having three thousand hormonal high school students trapped in a small area and definitely nothing like being in a terrified crowd of shoppers.

I'd been so worried about being discovered and being killed that I'd forgotten the reasons I'd wanted to be a hero in the first place.

People were afraid, and that was wrong. I needed to make this city the kind of place where people could move without fear. Likely it was impossible for there to be be no fear at all, but the best possible world would have minimum fear.

A city where jobs were there for everyone, where the gangs weren't preying on the weak...where people didn't have to worry about parahuman fights breaking out in every direction. That's what I was going to create for my city.

Brockton Bay...a city without fear. That's what I needed to create. A city where bullies were not allowed to thrive.

It was going to take a lot of work.

Dad had been less than enthusiastic about my black eyes, although he was strangely pleased about my standing up for myself with Blackwell. I'd felt helpless for so long that the thought I might have any sort of leverage over the administration was foreign to me.

He hadn't wanted me to go out until the weekend, but I'd assured him that I was only planning to go out on reconnaissance. Observe and inspect. He'd given me an old pair of binoculars from the basement, which I planned to use from a distance.

He'd wanted to go with me, claiming that I could use my senses from a car just as easily as from a rooftop. I'd had to explain to him that his own fear would make it more difficult to sense everyone else. That was a lie of course, but I didn't want to put him at risk. If I had to escape I could simply go shadow. If he left, it would be trivial for the gangs to track down his license plate.

I'd fidgeted in the hours before I was to be up; they stretched interminably. Eventually Dad suggested I take a nap. I was going to need the sleep anyway.

He was probably hoping I'd fall asleep and not wake up until morning. I was exhausted, but I woke up around midnight. He was already asleep and so I donned my costume and slipped through the door into our back yard.

I was less afraid now than I was the last time. Anyone approaching an unknown cape would have at least a little fear, which would give me the warning I needed to fight.

As I walked I opened my senses. The usual fear I'd felt in a seven block radius was dull and muted now, with most people asleep. I could feel something on the edge of my awareness, past the Market.

I headed in that direction at a fast clip. I still wasn't in the kind of shape I really needed to be for extended fights, and I was still aching from the beating Sophia had given me at school, but I felt the thrill of anticipation.

This was the first step to my plan to start making things better.

The fear was growing as I made my way through seven blocks. I passed the Market heading south, and I noticed that they still hadn't removed the walls on both sides that had been created by the Earth mover. That was one more thing that was going to hurt the economy of the city.

The fear I was feeling didn't feel like what I'd been expecting. I'd been expecting mild fear that went away as people left the drug dealers area. Instead I was getting a growing sense of fear that was moving.

Three blocks left, and I could hear it now. I could hear the sounds of fighting, which explained why people were afraid. Cape fights always led to people cowering in their homes, huddling and afraid that the violence would spill over onto them.

This was a residential area too. I felt power flowing into me as the inhabitants of this area were awake, doubtlessly watching from their windows.

I leaped and turned to shadow, turning back as I flew upward. I grabbed for a fire escape and easily pulled myself up. I was strong again; parahuman strong, and the pain from my injuries was fading temporarily. They weren't healing any faster but they were fading away.

As quietly as I could I climbed the fire escape. I saw one small girl staring out the window fearfully. I waved hello, but my skull mask and goggles probably didn't make that very reassuring.

I made my way up to the roof, although I had to go shadow again at the top and jump. As I scrambled to the top of the building I could see light flashing on the other side.

I crept across the gravel roof and crawled to the edge of the building. There wasn't a ledge to hide behind, just a three story drop, and so I had to lay prone to be mostly unseen.

Figures on the ground were fighting. Fenja and Menja were already twenty five feet tall. They, along with Hookwolf and Rune were fighting the Protectorate.

Armsmaster, Assault and Battery, Velocity and Vista and Kid Win were doing their best to fight the Empire 88 villains off, although they looked like they were overmatched. It pleased me that they were at least trying.

After all, I'd sort of believed that all they did was sit in their bases waiting for the next opportunity for the next public relations stunt. It was good to see them at least trying to do something productive.

I was uncertain what to do. I'd gotten into this to be a hero, but even with the fear of the local residents I wasn't powerful enough to take on Fenja, Menja or Hookwolf. I was tougher than normal, but they'd tear me to shreds.

Rune was in the air. I might be able to reach her, and her costume at least showed some skin, but if she saw me it'd be difficult to reach her.

More importantly, if the Protectorate saw me, they'd have questions. I'd heard that Armsmaster's outfit had video recordings that he used for public trials and other things. The last thing I wanted was to be caught on camera.

The smart play would be to leave well enough alone and go back to looking for a drug house.

Unfortunately, no one ever said that anyone who dressed up in a silly costume to go out and fight crime without even being paid for it was smart.

Rune was below me, only ten feet down. She was throwing large blocks of stone at Armsmaster, even as he was stabbing at Fenja...or Menja...I couldn't tell them apart.

Whichever twin it was staggered backwards and screamed as she fell back onto power lines, knocking a transformer over with a crash onto the ground.

I wondered if Armsmaster had done it deliberately even as everything in the neighborhood went dark.

Only a sliver of moon was in the sky, which meant that the darkness was almost complete in the area below me, given that it had tall buildings on all sides. I worried for a moment that I would be silhouetted against the stars, but lights from the rest of the city meant those couldn't be seen anyway.

It was going to take everyone's eyes a moment to adjust, and so this was my chance.

I crouched and leaped for the spot I'd seen Rune only a moment before. I didn't bother going shadow; with the blackout everyone's fear had spiked and I could easily survive the fall to the ground.

I grunted as I hit something; it was the platform Rune was on. She screamed and tried to shake me off but I scrambled to stay on. All I had to do was touch her and everything would be different.

I grabbed her leg, but she was wearing a boot. My grip was superhumanly strong though, and I knew she wouldn't be able to drop me from the platform without dropping herself.

We soared higher and the platform wobbled as we moved out of the intersection where the combat had been happening.

She could see me now, and she reached down to touch my hoodie.

I was choking suddenly as my own outfit tightened around my throat. I couldn't breathe, and I saw a massive chunk of rock following us as we careened onto the next street over.

If she hit me with it, I didn't think I'd be able to keep holding onto her. I wasn't nearly as strong now as I had been on the Market; then I could have taken a hit from Glory Girl. Now I'd be lucky if I didn't come away with a broken leg.

I reached up with my other and and punched at her leg. I heard a sickening snapping sound and she screamed again. The platform we were on suddenly plunged to the street and I felt the hoodie loosening around my throat.

Without my fear enhanced durability I probably would have been unconscious or dead already from being choked. As it was I gasped for air as we plummeted toward the ground. She managed to stop the fall of the platform even though she'd fallen onto the platform.

I crawled up her body. Her hands were bare, and that's what I needed to touch. She tried to push me away, but she only had the strength of a girl who was smaller and younger than I was. Even without my powers I'd have been able to wrestle her pretty easily.

With them I had to have seemed like an unbeatable monster.

My hoodie suddenly began pulling, this time not to choke me but simply to pull me off of her. If she managed to pull me into the middle of the air she'd be able to do what she wanted with me.

I went shadow, and the hoodie went sailing behind me.

Why Sophia didn't fall through the floor of whatever building she was standing in I'd never understood, but whatever aspect of that power allowed it also allowed me to stay on the platform now. I suspected that I could have slipped through the platform if I'd wanted, but I didn't.

I could see her eyes widen as the hoodie went flying away, and a moment later I brushed her hand.

It was only then that I realized the folly of what I'd done. We were twenty feet in the air on a platform of solid rock and her powers suddenly vanished.

We went plummeting to the street below.


	6. Skull

We were in free fall for less than a second before we crashed to the ground. My knees and hands took most of the impact, although my body crushed Rune's beneath me. I was strong enough to keep my head from impacting, but Rune wasn't so lucky.

She was unconscious, and blood was coming from her nose. I'd read once that that was a very serious sign. I checked her for a cell phone and I didn't find any.

Glancing around, I could still hear the fighting going on around the corner. None of the Protectorate were going to be able to get away in time to help her.

Looking down at her, it looked like she was fourteen. I felt a sudden surge of guilt. Was I willing to kill to get these powers? If I was, didn't that make me a villain?

I reached inside, trying to find her power. I found it, and I suddenly knew what I had to do. I reached down to the piece of masonry underneath us and my fingers twisted in a series of motions I couldn't understand why I was making. All I knew was the bigger the object the longer it took.

A moment later we were in the air, wobbling.

I had to get her to a hospital, even if it possibly risked outing me as a cape. I wasn't rearing my hoodie and underneath I just had a black shirt and pants, my skull chin mask and goggles.

It was harder than I thought to move the platform. It took me a while to realize that it was crumbling from the impact of the fall.

It was getting harder and harder to hold the whole thing together and fly at the same time, but I could see the light of the hospital in the distance. I forced the platform to fly faster, even though this meant that pieces were dropping off and falling as we flew.

By the time we were two blocks away there wasn't much left of the platform. By the time we were a block away I had to let us drop to the ground.

I looked around and there wasn't anything I could easily use as another platform. I looked down at her. You weren't supposed to let someone's neck move if they'd been injured like that, were you?

Her costume was a red and black robe, like a movie wizards with a hood. She'd controlled my hoodie; maybe I could do the same with her. I let my fingers rest on her chest for a moment, then the robes tightened, lifting her. I was in control of it, and I did the best I could to keep from moving her neck.

I ran, the motionless form of the girl floating behind me.

One block shouldn't have been much, but I was feeling tired by the time I reached there.

There were cameras around the entrance to the hospital. I pulled out my binoculars, thankful that they hadn't been broken in the fight.

I then sent Rune floating toward the automatic doors at the emergency room entrance. I let her drop gently to the ground and then I made it look as though she was being dragged by her feet by some invisible person. With any luck the PRT and hopefully the gangs would be looking for someone invisible instead of a power copier.

As he body reached the automatic doors, they opened. I used the binoculars to watch as the body looked as though it was dragged inside. When I saw people running to help her, I relaxed. There wasn't anything else I could do; I'd taken an enormous risk to help a Nazi anyway.

I decided to head home. I touched my own pants and shirt, thinking I'd be able to use my own clothes to help me fly, much as I'd had Rune float. I grimaced as I realized that flying upright was going to give me a terrible wedgie, and flying horizontally would give me a neck ache as I tried to watch where I was going.

Kneeling, I touched my shoes for a moment. It was difficult to balance, but I soon found myself flying through the streets. I could tell why Rune hadn't chosen to do this. Using her power became more difficult the more objects she tried to control. I doubted that she'd be able to control more than four at a time, and my shoes counted as two. It was also hard on the ankles; a little like the time I'd tried water skiing with Dad and Emma, back when Mom was alive.

I kept myself low on the off chance I lost concentration. I didn't have fear making me tough enough to survive a long fall, and the last thing I wanted was to end up like Rune.

Floating five feet over the ground I sped up, flying fifteen miles an hour. A fall at this speed would be like a bad bicycle accident, which I could survive.

With most people asleep in the neighborhood, I had hardly any fear to feed on.

I sensed fear to my left and I switched into my shadow form, turning my head to look at a pale face staring out of a window in the darkness. I'd practiced my shadow form in a mirror, and the skull half mask looked horrendous when the rest of the body vanished into darkness.

The face vanished quickly from the window.

I knew I had to get my act together. I didn't know what I was doing, and I was hurting people. Everyone I came into contact with ended up in the hospital or dead. It was only a matter of time before I was in Glory Girl's place...and I was actually responsible for that as well.

How did the Protectorate and Wards keep from killing people? How did the villains? You hardly ever heard about villains accidentally killing people, although I supposed that if they killed them they'd pretend they meant to do it all along.

I needed training, and I needed it fast.

At the rate I was going, the Protectorate was going to follow a trail of bodies right to my door.

I didn't wake Dad to tell him what had happened the night before, and as I approached Winslow, I was anxious, but not for the usual reasons. Normally I'd be afraid of what the Trio would have planned for me, but now I had an entirely new set of worries.

Had Rune woken up. Had she told the authorities what had happened to her powers?

I'd forgotten my hoodie at the scene of the crime. Had the Protectorate found something incriminating in it that meant they'd be waiting for me at the school.

Every step I took made me feel more and more anxious, and I regretted deeply not being able to feed off my own fear. I'd have been strong enough to lift a truck.

As I entered the school I was relieved not to notice any PRT vans waiting. I didn't feel the sort of fear that a group of soldiers might feel waiting for an unknown parahuman.

It eased my anxiety only a little. My entire first class was spent anxiously awaiting my second. I barely even noticed Madison's attempts to annoy me with spitballs and pointed comments.

Computer class was the class that I'd been waiting for. I completed my assignment in record time, and then I went online.

I stared at the computer, then felt the tension go out of my body.

Rune was in a coma.

I felt guilty for feeling relieved about it, but it put my day of reckoning off. Rune was young, and the prospect of her recovery was considered guarded.

Had I done the right thing? It was possible that real medical help could have been close by. I could have slipped through a wall and used someone's phone. Ambulances didn't like getting near cape fights, however, which was why the PRT had their own medical employees.

Had I handled her body incorrectly?

Even if I had done everything correctly I was ultimately art fault. I'd wanted her power and I'd taken it without considering the consequences, any more than I had toward the man Glory Girl had killed.

The PRT knew about Shadow Stalker. They couldn't be sure about the skinhead Glory Girl had killed. Presumably his companions would tell them about his power, and they might believe that people had stopped being afraid enough to keep him from being tough. They might even think that Glory Girl's aura had counteracted the fear.

Give them a third data point, though, and the jig was up. Once Rune woke up...and with Hebert luck it was inevitable that she would...they'd be looking for a power thief. They'd be looking at the people who were near the skinhead at the time, and they had people's testimony.

I had no illusions about how I'd fare against the full Protectorate. They knew about Sophia's weakness to electricity, which meant they'd come after me with electrified nets or something similar. They'd hit me with tasers and tranquilizer darts. They'd _contain_ me.

I felt ashamed when I realized that part of me wished that Rune would simply die or not wake up. Thinking like that made me more like Sophia than I wanted to believe.

If they connected me with the two Merchants I'd attacked, they'd think I was an incredibly violent cape. I'd beaten both of them pretty badly, and they were both still in the hospital days later. I'd deliberately snapped Rune's leg.

Teleportation seemed like an obvious solution, but as far as I knew there was only one teleporter in Brockton Bay.

Oni Lee was far too dangerous to deal with. He'd cut my throat or explode me with grenades before I ever had a chance to land a finger on him...and his costume was fully concealing anyway.

If I was just copying powers instead of stealing them I'd have gone after capes with public identities. They were easy to find after all, and I'd have loved to have Glory Girl and Panacea's powers, much less those of the rest of their family. I could have been a Cape that people looked up to instead of having to skitter around in the darkness hoping no one would see me.

Touching random people everywhere I went, I'd have eventually got some useful powers.

I couldn't do that now. I wasn't sure if not stealing Panacea's powers meant I had to actively try not to take them. It was possible I could still have accidents.

For now all I had to do was try my best not to kill or maim anyone else.

"What is this?"

Dad held up a black vest.

"I've been thinking about your problem all weekend," he said. "And I've decided that you need more protection than just a hoodie."

"We...we can't afford this."

"I sold some things," he said, looking away. "It was only a couple of hundred dollars. And if it saves us hospital bills it'll be worth it in the long run."

Running my hands over the vest, I looked up at him. "Tell me about it."

"It's rated against 9mm bullets and standard blades," he said. "it's five and a half pounds, and it's concealable."

I nodded. If thugs could see that I was wearing a vest they'd be more likely to try to shoot me in the head.

"It's a start," he said. "When we get more money there is a South American company that makes bulletproof motorcycle armor. There's also a company in Poland called Moratex that makes a liquid body armor...a kind of gel that is more bulletproof than Kevlar. A tinker came up with it, but it's not tinkertech."

"You've done a lot of thinking about this," I said.

More than I had. I'd been more worried about not beating people to death and where I'd get my next fix. Personal protection had been the last thing on my mind.

"I'll feel better if I know that every thug out there with a knife can't catch you by surprise and kill you. None of it will matter if you meet Hookwolf or Lung, but it'll make me feel safer."

"I'd never fight either one of those guys," I said confidently.

Unless I was sure I could win, anyway. It was becoming more and more clear that my best strategy was to ambush people. Once I had their powers they wouldn't be much of a threat. After all, most of the stronger Capes didn't even bother to carry weapons.

He pulled out several other things from the bag.

A collapsible baton. It would be a lot less likely to kill someone than a pipe wrench and it would be a lot easier to carry, too.

Pulling out pepper spray and a stun gun he smiled at me. I felt myself becoming teary eyed. I'd been obsessing over how to avoid killing people and he was handing it to me as a gift.

"One last thing," he said. He pulled out the last thing I would have expected.

A phone.

Mom had died while talking to me on her cell phone and driving. Dad had banned them from the house ever since.

It was a cellphone with an internet connection.

"It has prepaid minutes and you can only access the internet from places that have free wireless connections," he said. "i got myself one too. I just have to know that if you are hurt somewhere I'll be able to track you down and get you to safety."

"What did you sell for all of this?" I asked, hugging him. He had to have spent five hundred dollars for all of this at least and other than the car I couldn't imagine what he could have traded.

He coughed and looked away. "Your mom had some jewelry. I'm not even sure why I held onto it. It reminded me of her, I guess. I gave blood too."

I'd heard Emma and the others making fun of people for giving blood. They said that was something the homeless did for their next fix...and for cookies. From what I heard it couldn't have given him more than thirty dollars.

I felt ashamed. I hadn't been doing enough to help out around the house. I should have gotten a job...at fifteen there wasn't a lot I could do, but I could have gotten jobs babysitting or dog walking or maybe delivering papers.

At the expression on my face he shook his head. "Do you think your mother would have wanted me keeping the jewelry if it meant you getting hurt?"

He continued. "I did a lot of research over the weekend and at work...everybody says that Capes are drawn to conflict like bees to honey. There's a reason there are so few rogues, and it's not just because the gangs and the Protectorate pressure people to join. My first impulse was to keep you from going out, but you can walk through walls. My own fear is probably strong enough that you could knock your door down."

He stood up. "I decided that if you were going to be out and in danger I was going to do everything I could to keep you safe."

I coughed, and said,"There's something I have to tell you."

Letting my fingers gesture along the surface of the cell phone, I let go, and it remained where it was, hanging in mid-air.

"I collected more powers," I said. I forced myself to smile. "Yay?"

I'd been lucky not to be grounded for the rest of my life. Fighting low level gangers was one thing, but the Empire Eighty Eight would kill me and everyone I cared about if they found out what I'd done to Rune.

My argument that they'd be after me even if I hadn't yet stolen any of their powers hadn't swayed Dad much.

He hadn't wanted to let me go out again so soon after what had happened, convinced that the Protectorate was going to be looking for me, but I'd convinced him that I would run away even if a Cape was dancing nude with their back turned to me.

In that situation I probably _would_ run away, especially since the most likely candidate for something like that was Mush.

He'd had some other suggestions for how to make me scarier so that I could detect people and be strong enough that I wouldn't be as vulnerable.

Tonight was finally a quiet night, and so my plan to use fear to find a drug house had finally borne fruit. It was a Merchant front, but I didn't care about that.

Instead I was dressed in my Dad's old leather jacket with the armor underneath it. He'd gotten me glow in the dark paint, and we'd spent the evening painting my face half mask so that the skull glowed. In my shadow form it looked even more evil and disturbing.

Mom had worked for Lustrum once, and she'd talked to Dad about how much of being a Cape was about theater. It was about creating an image and making people believe it. It didn't matter if a Cape was a hero or a villain, his image was what made enemies hesitate to face them.

I had the pipe wrench again, but this time it wasn't to hit people with. I was going to use it for something else.

Dad had a pocket watch...it played a strange little tune. Dad said it was from a pre-Scion movie about a time traveling Jack the Ripper.

It seemed unlikely that anyone would recognize the tune, but Dad said that I could make it scary again once word got around.

I was a block away and I could see several people hanging out in front of the house.

Time to put my plan into action.

I had two large ball bearings in my pocket. I threw them up in the air and a moment later they flashed out, shattering the street lights one by one.

I destroyed the lights in unison, so that they vanished in pairs getting closer and closer to the house. From the distance the men outside were at they wouldn't be able to see exactly how the lights were going out, and that was going to make them uneasy.

Touching the pipe wrench, I set it to dragging along the ground, making a loud noise as it scraped along the pavement. I could feel the fear of the men growing, and one went inside, hopefully to alert his comrades.

Once all the lights were out, I released the ball bearings, knowing they'd drop harmlessly to the ground.I reached down and touched my shoes, my fingers moving.

Then I opened my pocketwatch and let the tune play.

I could see the men react, especially when I switched into my shadow form and started floating toward them. I was a shadowy floating figure with a glowing, misshapen skull. I had to look like death itself.

They started firing at me, and as I felt the bullets passing through me I realized something.

I could do this.


	7. Interlude: Miss Militia

Flashing red lights illuminated the neighborhood.

The PRT had been called to what was believed to be a Cape fight. Instead they found a drug stashhouse where multiple men were unconscious. Some had obviously been tased while others had strange bruises.

It would have been business as usual if it hadn't been for the stories the men who were finally awakening told.

Hannah stared at the man standing before him. He smelled and was clearly high on something, but he was one of the most lucid of the people there.

"What happened?"

"I was just passing by, you know," the man said. He scowled, showing yellowed teeth. "I had nothing to do with whatever those guys were doing in that house."

"I'm sure," Hannah said dryly.

"Just didn't want you to think I was involved or nothin..." the man said. He trailed off and started staring into space.

"So what happened?"

"The lights started going out, two at a time. It was freaky how it was all in order, one after another. Usually you just get power outages when everything goes out at once, but this was different."

"Different?"

"Deliberate...like something was coming toward us." The junkie shuddered. "There was this scraping sound, and then this music. I'm sure I heard it before, but I don't know where."

"Music?" Hannah had learned that part of the interview process was to avoid questions that could be answered with yes or no. That tended to make the subject close up. Open ended questions worked better, and you didn't even have to talk much if the subject was talkative.

He hummed the tune, swaying on his feet.

The tune didn't sound familiar to her, but she hadn't been in the country until twenty years ago, so it might have been before her time. She'd have dragon look it up for her, as she was recording these interviews.

"Then we saw it...floating in the air, made of darkness, skull face glowing. We...I mean the other guys kept shooting and shooting at it, but it just kept coming as though it wasn't even there."

"It threw these little metal balls at us, and they started flying around and hitting people. I've got a bruise on my arm the size of your fist!"

The man shuddered. "The balls hit people's guns hard enough to break them...I could hear guys' fingers snapping...and then it was on us. It started throwing people through the air and when people tried to hit it their fists passed right through it. I saw a guy get a solid hit in and it looked like he almost broke his fist."

Looking around, Hannah could believe it. Six people were being hospitalized while ten more were going to jail.

"I got hit by a fu..I mean, by a taser, and that's the last thing I remember."

His statement matched the other five she'd already taken. No one knew whether the mystery cape was male or female, but they'd broken in, beaten everyone and apparently taken whatever cash was on site before calling on a victim's phone.

Colin said that voice analysis of the call indicated a ninety five percent match on whoever attacked the two merchant muggers the other day, including the skull mask, although their costume this time seemed to be much more extensive. He believed it was the voice of a female, young, possibly Wards age.

No one would tell them how much the Cape had gotten away with. Every one of them were claiming they had been just passing by and that someone else owned the house.

They were all being charged with a variety of crimes, including gun possession, possession of drug paraphernalia and drug possession charges. Some of them would possibly walk, a hazard of being caught by a vigilante who wouldn't be there to testify, but Hannah suspected that a lot of the charges would stick. There had been numerous complaints about this house, and there would undoubtedly be neighbors willing to testify.

No one had been killed, and this attack was less brutal than the Cape's last attack had been.

"What do you think?" Hannah asked Colin as the last of the men were being loaded into PRT vans. "Do you think this is our girl?"

There had been a girl's hoodie found at the scene of Rune's attack. It had brown hairs and analysis ruled out anyone of African American or Asian decent. Had the hair been torn from the person's skull with some of the root intact they'd have been able to determine more, like gender. The only other thing they'd been able to determine was the person who'd owned the hoodie hadn't been using any kind of drugs.

"I'm not sure," he said. "I've got infrared scopes in my visors; they are helpful when I have to deal with sudden darkness and some Strangers are only invisible to visible wavelengths. I caught a glimpse of, whoever it was that attacked Rune."

Hannah had seen the video. Colin's scanner wasn't detailed enough to see facial figures, but the figure had been tall and thin. It had been an exceptional leap as well, one Hannah wasn't sure she herself could have made.

"Some kind of brute to have jumped as high as she did and to do what she did to these men here," Hannah said.

"A Stranger if the video from the hospital is any indication. Given the time that passed before she was delivered I'd have to say some kind of Mover."

"A telekinetic?" Hannah asked.

"It could have been tinkertech...most of it could have been tinkertech," Colin said. "There's no evidence of anything being maneuvered except these two balls, whatever they are."

"Some kind of exoskeleton then?" Hannah stared out at the house and shook her head. Colin liked to ascribe every Cape as a possible Tinker, but this possibly could be. Brutes with Stranger ratings were fairly rare, given that the types of trigger events that created them seemed to be quite different.

"It could be someone working with a Tinker," Colin admitted. "Some of the powers being theirs and using Tinkertech to make it look like they are more powerful than they are."

"We'll know more when we talk to Rune," Hannah said. "The doctors think it'll be safe to take her out of the medically induced coma in a couple of weeks."

"Who knows what else our suspect would have done by then," Colin said. He looked around. "At least she's escalating in numbers instead of in violence."

She'd intentionally shattered Rune's leg, which spoke to her violence in Hannah's mind. The girl was fourteen years old after all and built like a twig, even if she was a Nazi. There was some hope in rehabilitating the girl once she was out of her coma and rebranding her in another city as a Ward. Her choice would be that or prison.

Hannah could only hope that worked better than it had with Shadow Stalker.

"Is there any progress with Stalker?" she asked.

Armsmaster shook his head. "Nothing so far. She still has her gemma...it just doesn't seem to be connected to anything. All the tests they've done haven't come up with any possible way it could have been done."

He looked as concerned as she was. If the enemy had found a way to neutralize Capes it would be a game changer. They were already outnumbered two to one. If an enemy Tinker could depower them one after the other, the villains would have free reign to take over anything.

"It's part of the reason that I think they might be working with a Tinker," Armsmaster said. "What are the odds that multiple Tinkers show up in town at the same time as our mystery Cape?"

"We've got no proof that it's her," Hannah asked.

Colin snorted. "We've got no proof that she isn't. We've got to treat her like a threat until we learn otherwise."

It was just as possible that whoever had raided this drug house had been a villain as a vigilante, although Hannah would have expected a villain to take the drugs as well as the money.

"If she's a Stranger she could be here watching us right now," Hannah said.

"I've got sensors on everywhere," he said. "You can go crazy with the what ifs when dealing with Strangers. It's better to take some things on faith."

She stared at him, and he shrugged. "It's more efficient."

Relaxing, she nodded. At least she wasn't going to have him subjected to Master Stranger protocols.

"The music is from a pre-Scion movie. Time After time 1979, starring Roddy McDowell," Dragon said. It hadn't taken her long to find the music. She played the music, something that sounded like it came from a music box. "It was based on Chants d'Auvergne, "The Spinner".

"Does it have any significance?" Hannah asked.

"In the movie, Jack the Ripper borrows a time machine from H.G. Wells to come to 1979 to continue his murder spree. Every time he killed a woman he would play that tune from a pocket watch."

Hannah felt a chill.

"Is she trying to tell us something? Send a message with the music?" Hannah said. "the last thing we need is a parahuman serial killer, especially one that takes Jack the Ripper as a role model."

"I've checked the death reports in Brockton Bay for the last year and haven't found any anomalies."

Hannah frowned. There had been over six hundred murders in Brockton Bay last year, more than New York and Los Angeles combined and only a little behind Chicago, even though Chicago had eight times the population.

"What about patterns of missing persons, especially known prostitutes?"

"I've already checked," Dragon said. "They are all within normal variances."

"So it's a challenge?" Hannah asked. "Find me before I start killing? If she plans on going after woman, why target the Merchants? Why go after the Empire Eighty Eight?"

"Most new Capes attack gang members either for reasons of ideology or because they are seeking resources."

"Whoever launched the attack on Shadow Stalker was already well funded," Hannah said. "This isn't the work of somebody building tools out of a microwave and a blender. We don't even know when the attack was launched. It could have been an airborne virus, one that had already left the body by the time we were able to check."

"Have you considered Panacea?" Dragon asked. "I've been suspicious about her abilities given that every other power seems to be geared for conflict. If anyone could have done something like this, she could have."

"Stalker hadn't seen Panacea in two months," Hannah said. She shook her head. "Not until we had her check to see if what was wrong."

Panacea hadn't been any more helpful than the lab tests they had done. According to her, Sophia Hess's gemma had regressed to the same condition as someone who had never had a power. It meant that she could trigger again, but it was just as possible that she might not.

Not everyone with the brain abnormality triggered after all. Some people simply lived through their personal version of hell and got through it, or they died.

There were clues everywhere, and Hannah had a strong feeling that they were missing the one piece that would bring it all together.

The investigation was young; it had been less than a week since the new Cape had come onto the scene and experience told her that Capes didn't just vanish into obscurity. They were drawn to conflict like moths to a flame. Sooner or later the new Cape would make a mistake and then they'd have them.

"We didn't get much from the Merchants in the first attack, did we?" she asked.

"They refused to talk, claiming that some Cape in a skull mask had attacked them. There was some memory loss from the head injuries they'd sustained, but the attack was considered unusually brutal for a Cape, unless it's one who didn't know her own strength yet."

"Even experienced Capes have that problem sometimes," Hannah muttered.

The Glory Girl case was troublesome. She wasn't being charged, given that multiple witnesses had said he'd taken her first blow without any problem. However, from all reports she was taking the death extremely hard. She hadn't been seen at school for the past three days and all reports said she hadn't come out of her room at home during the same time.

There had been overtures toward Carol Dallon about getting her training with the Wards, but the woman had been angry and defensive.

The public relations hit New Wave was taking was much worse. There had been rumors about excessive force from Glory girl for years, although it had never been proven. Now people were calling her a loose canon and she was being crucified online.

Some people online were calling for her to be criminally charged while other people were calling her a hero.

"We have a new data point," Dragon said suddenly.

"Yes?" Hannah asked.

"Someone saw our suspect heading north from Lord's Market. Crews today discovered that someone had taken down the walls Mr. Dalton created blocking both ends of the street."

Neither of the surviving attackers had been able to tell them anything. They'd both claimed to have Amnesia, and Colin had recently completed a lie detector that led him to believe them. Neither of them were Case 53's, but they both had the same kind of brain changes that had been seen in Case 53s before.

They'd claimed that their companion had gotten stronger through fear. The working theory now was that Glory Girl's presence had decreased the fear level enough that he'd been vulnerable. Hannah doubted that because there had been reports of people screaming and fleeing.

Often in these kinds of investigations there was a single eureka moment when the connection between previous leads suddenly made sense. Afterwards it was often hard to understand why you hadn't made the connection before.

Clockblocker's voice suddenly interrupted her train of thought.

"Um...Miss Militia?"

"Yes?"

"Armsmaster is requesting your presence at Brockton Bay General. Apparently Rune has been murdered."

"She's mocking us," Colin said scowling.

The hospital room was a nightmarish horror show. The corpse of the girl that had been Rune hadn't been moved, and blood soaked the bed and dripped onto the floor.

The top of her head had been removed. It was obvious that her brain had been completely removed from her skull.

"The cut is too fine to have been done by anything other than a laser or a monomolecular blade," Colin said dispassionately. "Or through a power, of course."

As many powers as had been documented, there were always new ones popping up to swurpisd

"I thought we left a protective division here for her, along with not advertising her location to the media?"

There had always been a small risk of one of the other gangs targeting Rune, even though it really wasn't Lung's style and the Merchants were unlikely to care enough to bother. Had it been someone from the other gangs they'd have left a member of the Protectorate to guard her, since the Empire 88 would be more likely to retaliate.

"There were ten men set to guard her," Colin said. "We found organic residue matching the DNA of three of them. Four more are simply gone."

"And the other two?"

Colin grimaced. He pulled out his PRT phone and flipped through it. "We removed the bodies to avoid alerting the hospital staff."

"What is this?"

She recognized the two men in the picture. Both were frozen, ice covering their corpses with expressions of horror on their faces.

He flipped to another picture showing red tinged chunks of ice.

"This one was frozen as well, but his body was shattered."

"And no one saw anything?" Hannah asked.

"None of the staff members saw anything, and the only people caught on camera were the ones supposed to be here."

"This many powers," Hannah said. "Either teleportation or invisibility to get here, freezing, disintegration...it's pretty unlikely that even a grab bag cape would have this many powers. Either we're looking at the work of multiple people or some kind of a Tinker."

Colin nodded grimly. Normally he was proud to think that a new cape was a Tinker, but having one be a murderer with this level of depravity had to be upsetting for him, although he never would have admitted it.

"So you think it's our mystery cape," Hannah said. "Have we come up with a name for her yet?"

"We are calling her Charon, presumably for the skull imagery."

"If she wants something better I suppose she'll have to come forward," Hannah said.

She was silent for a long moment. "What I don't understand is why she'd go to all the effort to bring the girl here for treatment if she was planning to do this to her? Why not simply kill her and dispose of the body?"

"That would have been the efficient thing to do," Colin agreed. "And would have allowed her to continue attacking people from the shadows for a while before she was discovered. I believe that she is taunting us. This body is a message."

"What kind of message?"

"I can attack any of you with impunity," he said. "This is meant to terrify and disorganize us. It may actually turn the Empire 88 against us if they are somehow led to believe that we are somehow complicit in this murder."

"There's always a fringe community that will believe any kind of conspiracy," Hannah admitted.

There were even people who believed that the Protectorate was ruled by some kind of secret cabal that controlled everything, running the underworld in the same way they ran the government. In Hannah's experience fanatics and conspiracy nuts couldn't be reasoned with.

"Acting like this is likely to get her a kill order," Colin said. "A well deserved one."

Hannah shook her head. "We still don't have any proof that it was her. Should this be the work of someone else we'd be doing a grave injustice to attack a new Cape on supposition."

"The new Cape is playing Jack the Ripper's theme song," Colin said. "Even Jack Slash doesn't do that."

"If she should turn out to be the Cape who did this," Miss Militia said. "I will be happy to be the one to put a bullet between her eyes."


	8. Flailing

"It worked like a charm!" I said to Dad as I slipped through the door. I slung the dufflebag filled with the money I'd stolen from the Merchants on the table.

I'd been running high on adrenaline and the residual excitement of the fear I'd caused since I'd assaulted the drug house, and I couldn't stop myself from grinning. My career as a cape had been one of one failure after another, and I'd started to think that I wasn't cut out for the whole thing.

Tonight, though...it was an indescribable high. I'd plowed through at least twenty men like they were nothing. I'd hurt them, but not too badly, and I'd gotten the PRT there, shutting down at least one place where people were selling drugs and ruining lives.

This was what heroing was supposed to be. Fighting the good fight, taking names and making a difference. I felt strong and competent, not like a little girl in her daddy's costume out playing make believe.

It had been planning that had made the difference. When I'd gone out with no plan people had gotten hurt. When I'd had a chance to work with surprise and forethought I'd kept everyone relatively safe.

I was pulling off my mask when I saw Dad's expression. He didn't look thrilled. Instead he looked sober and serious. He was sitting on the couch and he had glass filled with gin.

He didn't usually drink on weekdays.

"What is it?" I asked. The last time I'd seen that expression on his face was the day Mom had died.

"It's on the news," he said. "Rune is dead."

My mask dropped to the floor. The breath in my chest was suddenly gone, and the exuberant joy I'd just been feeling was washed away with a sudden feeling of horror.

"How?"

"They haven't released details," Dad said. "Somebody from the hospital released the news even before the Protectorate had a chance to investigate. They say more details will be available later."

It was the fall. That was the only thing it could have been. She was young and healthy and parahuman; it wasn't like she'd suddenly catch a weird disease and die in the space of a single day.

I slowly sat down in the chair next to the couch. My success of the evening felt like ashes in my mouth. All I could think was that Rune was a girl even younger than I was. She had a mother and father who were waiting at home. Did the authorities even knew who Rune was? Were her parents waiting at home for a girl who was never coming home?

If I'd died in the locker it might have been days before I was discovered, days in which my father would have searched for me in vain.

Now her parents might be going through the same thing. She'd believed in some horrible things but that didn't give me the right to kill her.

I looked up. "I should turn myself in."

He shook his head. "The Empire Eighty Eight has made a statement to the press. They called the attack on Rune cowardly and despicable and they are planning vengeance on whoever killed her."

They'd go after Dad.

The unwritten rules weren't laws by any means, and the Empire Eighty Eight had been known to play fast and loose with them in the past. If kidnapping or murdering Dad got them closer to me they'd have no compunctions about doing it.

If they killed Dad, I'd have nothing left to lose. I'd go after them full time. Once I had no secret identity I'd go after Lung, after Skidmark, after anyone I thought would make me strong enough to wipe them from the face of the earth.

I'd already been responsible for the deaths of two people. How many more would I kill before this was all over?

From the expression on Dad's face he understood everything as well as I did.

"The unpowered members of the Empire Eighty Eight are rioting all over the city," Dad said. He nodded toward the front window.

I'd slipped in through the back.

Moving over to the window, I looked out. I could see fires in the distance, and now that I was aware of it, I could feel fear growing at the end of my range.

"I have to go out there and help," I said.

"Haven't you done enough?" he said sharply. He winced. "I didn't mean it like that. It's just...they'll be looking for you now. What you said before about them coming for you, it was all theoretical. Now...I'm scared for you."

Weirdly enough, I wasn't scared for myself. Instead I felt strangely numb. None of this felt real; it felt like it was happening to someone else.

"I can't just sit and do nothing," I said.

"Are you ready to fight Hookwolf and Kaiser all by yourself?" he asked. "The minute you start busting heads the thugs are going to call their bosses. You'll be lucky to escape with your limbs intact."

I couldn't argue with him. I wasn't ready for Hookwolf or any of the other big name villains.

"So what do we do?" I asked him.

"Nothing," he said, finger circling the rim of his glass. "I've been through this with your mother while she was working with Lustrum. The authorities are waiting for you to stick your neck out. They want you to make it easy for you to find them."

"I could dump the costume, try to be somebody else," I said.

He nodded. "Still, the powers you have are too visible. Someone is going to make the connection sooner or later, especially if you keep using Shadow Stalker's power."

I stared at him sullenly. I _needed_ that power. Without it, any thug with a gun could shoot me in the head and it would all be over.

What I needed was more powers.

It was strange that every solution tended to be more powers, but that was the way it was. Trapped as I was, I couldn't see much else I could do.

"They won't be able to keep the riots up for long," Dad said. "They are really mostly for show. They will keep looking out for you. Right now they don't know who you are, but when they find out..."

"So what...I do nothing?" I asked.

"You train," he said. "Let the heat die down. It'll take time to buy all the equipment you'll need, especially since I'm going to have to get help from my friends so that none of it gets traced back to us."

"Won't they ask questions?"

A small smile appeared on his face. "Do you think anybody will question my wanting to get a few things for defense, what with all the gang unrest, especially if I pay them a little extra?"

"And why will you tell them you can't just buy it yourself?"

"I've done some favors for people, enough that some of them won't ask any questions," Dad said. "Getting any of this tracked back to us would end pretty badly, especially now. I won't use anybody I can't trust absolutely."

"I don't like it," I said. "The more people who are in on it, the more people there are to accidentally let something slip. They'll be even more likely to let it slip if they don't know they aren't supposed to say anything."

Dad frowned. "I know some guys who have some contacts in Boston. You might be able to go there in costume and get some things you need through the black market. We probably shouldn't use this identity for you though."

"There's a group in town...Faultline," I said. "They're mercenaries. I'd bet they'd be willing to be intermediaries for something like that, assuming they got a decent cut of the profits."

"And the moment someone pays them they'd turn on you in a minute."

I frowned, but eventually nodded. I couldn't trust anyone in town, and even people out of town were only trustworthy because talking to them wouldn't give the people here any clues.

I found myself wishing that I really did have the invisibility power I'd pretended to have dragging Rune at the hospital.

There were Capes out there in regular prisons, and I'd bet I could slip into the prisons easily enough if I was intangible and invisible. Taking powers from people like that would be like shooting fish in a barrel.

Stranger powers would be ideal for someone like me. With invisibility and a good ability to sense conflict I'd be able to steal the powers of every villain in Brockton Bay before they knew what had happened to them.

I shook my head. I'd just learned that I'd killed someone and I was already drifting off and thinking about stealing more powers. What was wrong with me?

"I found someone to get you training," Dad said. "It's pricey but one on one training is going to be more effective than learning at the community center with all the kids and old people...assuming you still want to go."

"I'm going to hurt more people if I keep flailing around not knowing anything."

* * *

"Why learn to fight?"

The man I was planning to learn martial arts from was shorter than Emma. He was a wizened raisin of a man, wiry, but balding. I wasn't sure what to make of him. Other than looking vaguely Asian, he didn't look like my preconceived notions of what a martial arts master should look like. From what I understood he was actually Filipino. Jose Riza wasn't what I expected at all.

Dad started to speak, but a glance from the man made him stop. Apparently he wanted to hear my answer.

It had been three days since Sophia had given me black eyes, and two days since I'd learned I was a murderer. My black eyes were still prominent and I thought they should have answered his question without my opening my mouth.

I'd been taunted about them often enough. Emma had been making fun of me looking like a Raccoon, although she and her supporters had all had a small stench of anxiety, probably afraid that I'd lash out again.

"I'm being bullied at school," I said. I gestured toward my face. "They shoved me in a locker with biological wastes and left me there for hours. They'd tried to shove me down stairs, broken my possessions, done things..."

"And you wish revenge?" he asked, his face impassive.

I shook my head. "I want them to leave me alone. It finally got to be too much and I tried to fight back on Monday."

"That went how you expected?"

"I was beaten," I admitted. "The thing is, Sophia is the kind of person who likes to escalate. The school refused to do anything about the locker, and so the next thing she does is going to be will be even bigger. I'm afraid she's going to get a group and attack me."

He stared at me intently, but what I was saying had the virtue of being true. I suspected that Sophia planned to escalate things especially because she was no longer able to take her aggression out on unsuspecting criminals. I was all she had left to focus on, an it was only a matter of time before she found something even more horrible to do to me.

"Furthermore," I said, seeing that he didn't look entirely convinced. "I was attacked by a couple of Merchants last week. I managed to fight them off with a wrench, but I think I hurt them pretty badly. It's getting more and more dangerous out there and I'd like to learn how to keep from crushing somebody's skull while still being able to get away."

The old man nodded finally.

"I am not interested in teaching someone who wants to brag about what belt they have achieved, or who would rather text on their cell phone than listen to what I have to say. I do not teach sport fighting...if you wish to engage in competitions I can refer you to several reputable schools in he area."

"I really need this," I said.

"Americans think that martial arts is magic, that it will somehow transform a human into a parahuman. It is not true. Size matters...strength matters...speed matters. A skilled small man can beat a large man, but he will lose against an equally skilled large man, unless luck is with him that day."

Focusing on the man before me I nodded.

"You want to learn in months what would take some people years. That means you will have to train longer and more intensely than the people who are training for sport. This is a major investment in time and money. I expect you to train with me for two hours a day, five days a week, but you will also have an exercise regimen and additional training you will be expected to do on your own time. Expect that to take another two hours a day."

He paused. "And after all that it will never be as good as a gun. For two hundred dollars you can save yourself years of training. Why bother?"

"I can't exactly take a gun to school...and I can't legally carry one, being as I'm a minor. Besides...I'd prefer not to hurt people."

"The kind of people who are best at fighting are the people who don't mind hurting people," he said. "Criminals get more experience in real fights than anyone else. If you are afraid to hurt people you will hesitate and no amount of skill will help you."

I scowled. "I beat two men with a pipe wrench. I have no doubt that I can hurt someone if I have to. I want the choice of being able to hurt them or not."

He stared at me for a long moment, then nodded.

I mulled over what he'd told me. He was asking for a major investment in time, but fortunately he taught Escrima, focusing on using sticks, knives and improvised weapons. That seemed more useful for me than something that relied on a lot of upper body strength; after all, if was possible that I'd be caught out in a place without any enhanced strength.

Four hours a day sounded insane, but at least it would keep me from focusing on what had happened. The less time I had to think about it, the better.

"Not on weekends?" I asked.

He shook his head. "Your body will need time to heal, and besides, I have a social life."

Lucky him.

"That will be two hundred fifty a week," the man said. "With a two week deposit."

I nodded, shocked at the price. While it was true that the haul from the drug house had been eight thousand dollars, I'd hoped to have other uses for the money.

Escrima wasn't his only martial art; apparently he'd been in the military back before the Endbringers, when being in the military had really meant something. Hopefully he'd teach me some other things I needed to survive.

* * *

I thought I was going to die.

Master Riza had been true to his word, being worse than any drill instructor I'd seen on television. My entire body felt like it was a walking bruise, much worse than it had the night I'd gotten into an actual fight.

I'd thought we'd start slow, but he'd started hard and hadn't stopped. He'd had me get an old tire to take to my basement. Hitting the tire, apparently was to get me used to hitting things hard and to help me develop my grip.

He insisted that I run an increasing amount each day rain or snow and that I change my diet.

We weren't even sparring yet, but my arms ached every day and my legs trembled. He worked me to the point of exhaustion. I'd taken to doing my homework in the afternoons before our sessions because if I waited until afterwards I'd simply fall into bed too tired to do anything else.

Running longer and longer distances every day was especially hard; I was having to get up every day before school to run, and it wasn't easy.

It had been a week and a half and I still felt like pushing myself wasn't making things any easier.

At least the riots had died down. I'd spent several days feeling the dear on the edge of my range, and I'd felt frustrated at being unable to go out and do anything. I'd promised Dad that I wouldn't. It wasn't just hiding from the Protectorate.

We didn't need the Empire Eighty Eight associating me with the mystery cape that had attacked Rune.

So now I was running in freezing weather. I regretted running in my new white jacket because I was too hot and sweaty, but I knew that if I took it off I'd freeze. I was wearing a white beanie that covered my hair and my ears, and I had a Miss Militia handkerchief to wipe my sweat.

I stumbled as I felt a sudden spike of fear nearby.

Despite myself I changed my path to come closer to it. I'd like to think that it was concern for my fellow citizens instead of being drawn to the kind of fear that I hadn't fed off of in a week.

A woman was screaming in an alley, and I could see passers by bundling themselves up and walking faster. No one so much as called 911 or called the police. No one intervened.

The looks on people's faces were like the looks I imagined were on the faces of some of the students at my school when I'd been forced into the locker. Some of them had enjoyed it and taunted me, but others had just hurried on their way as though I wasn't worth anything.

Grimacing, I hesitated. No one was looking, deliberately I thought.

There was no way I could let a woman get hurt when I had the power to stop it, no matter whether I was trying to hide or not.

I pulled the beanie down over my ears as far as it would go, regretting that I hadn't gotten a balaclava. I tied the Miss Militia scarf over my face and I pulled the collapsible baton from my pocket and the mace from my other.

There wasn't enough fear to make me particularly strong, but I'd figured out something I could do in the meantime.

My fingers danced over the baton as I snapped it out to it's full length and I bent to touch my shoes.

Using telekinisis I could replicate the effects of super strength even if I didn't have it, making my baton hit harder.

I was tired, but Master Riza had insisted that learning to fight while exhausted was a crucial skill.

Stepping into the alley I saw three men, all Asians. They were trying to pull the clothes off of a woman who was struggling and screaming.

"Stop!" I yelled.

One of them turned and snarled, "You want some of this, bitch? Then join the party!"

I used my power to jump the thirty foot distance between us, and my baton snapped out. He screamed as his thigh snapped and he fell to the ground screaming.

"Cape!" the second man yelled.

They both dropped the woman and began to back away, but flashes of light blinded me for a moment. When I could see again both of them were on the ground.

I stepped away from the gang member on the ground; I'd been warned about staying within arm's reach of a downed opponent and I turned.

Floating in the air above me was a woman in a white costume with red lines and a ruby red headband. I recognized her immediately. It was Crystal Pellham from New Wave. She went by Laserdream.

"That's the worst costume I've seen in my entire life," she said.


	9. Stench

"I wasn't exactly planning to make my debut yet," I said peevishly.

I scowled at her. Making fun of a new Cape for their poor costumes seemed like it ought to be against the code. Of course, she'd never had to scrounge for money as a second generation Cape, so maybe she wasn't able to empathize.

"So you aren't Miss Militia's less fashionable niece?"

"Not everybody has a family full of people with connections to costume makers," I said. "Or access to daddy's money."

"Excuse me?"

I was startled and I turned. The woman who'd been assaulted had finished pulling her clothes back in place. She had scratches on her face and tears.

I felt embarrassed that I'd forgotten her, much less that she'd managed to surprise me. I was depending too much on my fear sense and once her fear had faded she'd faded from my awareness.

The thug on the ground moaned and the girl kicked him as she walked by. He gave out a short scream.

"Are you all right?" I asked.

"Do you need an ambulance?" Laserdream asked from behind me.

The woman shook her head. "I can't afford it."

She was an Asian woman in her early twenties. She could have been one of my teachers at school, if Winslow actually had the budget to hire anyone young.

"I've already alerted the PRT," Laserdream said. "If you will stay here to make a statement I'm sure it will help these men get what they deserve."

The woman nodded shortly. She stepped away from the men and slid down against the wall. She put her head in her hands and was silent.

"I've got to get going," I said. "Thanks for the assist."

"I was afraid of hitting her. I'd have figured something out eventually, but I'm glad you came by. You aren't going to give a statement to the PRT?"

"I'm not even in costume," I said. I stopped suspiciously. "You didn't see who I am, did you?"

She shook her head, but I noticed that she took a cautious step back from me. "I was focused on what was happening with the girl. I didn't see you until you came into the alley."

Although she was somewhat anxious at the thought that I might think she'd deliberately broken the unwritten code, I didn't sense any anxiety related to what she was saying. Of course, she might simply be so confident in her own power that she wasn't worried what I thought. Considering that I was an unknown, however, that didn't seem likely.

I could have been the next Lung, after all, and in a way, I suppose I was.

"So you are a brute?" she asked.

"Kind of," I said before I could stop myself. Thinking quickly, I said, "It's an adrenaline thing, makes me stronger in times of danger."

"What should I call you?" she asked.

"I haven't really come up with a name yet," I admitted. I snapped my collapsible baton shut. "All the really good Brute names have been taken, and some of the others sound kind of villainous. Bludgeon sounds like I plan on smashing people's brains out. Impact is already taken."

"Shillelagh?" she asked.

"I'm not Irish and I don't have a shillelagh. Besides, I don't want to dress up like the lucky charms guy."

"Blackjack?" she asked.

"Like the card game?" I asked, confused.

"It's also a little club you hit people with," she said. "Well, not you, but you know what I mean."

"It's got to be taken," I said. I heard the sound of Armsmaster's motorcycle in the distance. "I think that's my cue to leave. Thanks for the help."

She pulled a little card out of a pocket which I didn't even realize she had. For a moment I thought it might be tinkertech before I took a closer look and realized it was just really well concealed.

"You've got business cards?" I asked incredulously.

"Aunt Carol says it's important to network," she said. "If you need any advice just give me a call."

I took the card and I was careful not to brush her hands, even though she was wearing gloves. The temptation to take her power was in the back of my mind, and I ignored it.

Instead I said, "I'm sorry about your cousin. How is she?"

She stepped back and scowled. "Everybody asks that. How do you think she is? She hasn't come out of her room in two weeks. I'm taking on extra patrols just to make up for her."

"I hope she gets better," I said.

I felt a sharp stab of guilt as I turned and started running from the scene. I'd stood still long enough to cool down and I was sweaty in the underlayer and uncomfortable. It was my fault Glory Girl was like this, but telling her it wasn't her fault would probably lead to Dad being killed.

I could see her watching as I turned a corner. I was running away from the sound of Armsmaster's motorcycle so I thought I would be all right. I just hoped that I hadn't given anything away.

I pulled the scarf from my mouth when I was a block away. It wasn't until I was halfway home that I realized that I'd just accidentally created a second Cape persona for myself.

* * *

Approaching the storefront, I took a deep breath. After some consideration I had decided to keep the new identity Laserdream had created, which meant that I needed a costume. Unfortunately Emma had always been the one with the fashion sense and I had no ideas about what kind of costume to create.

"You don't have to be so anxious, it'll be fine," Laserdream said. "Parian is a sweetheart really."

I'd called Laserdream a couple of times in the week when I last saw her asking for advice, mostly about where Capes got their costumes and how to do it without blowing secret identities. I'd been careful to always call from somewhere away from the house just in case she decided to trace the call, and I took to removing the battery when I was at the house for the same reason.

You'd think that she wouldn't know about keeping secret identities, considering that her family had gone public long before, but she knew a lot of Capes and she had listened to a lot of their stories.

Her Cousin Glory Girl swore by the rogue Parian, who sometimes took orders to design and create costumes for capes. She wasn't established enough yet to have her own shop, but she sometimes worked out of the back of a dry cleaner near the college; she'd rented a space there in return for making alterations in real time a few days a week.

Calling ahead, I had an appointment, but I was a little anxious. Laserdream had promised to go with me to help with advice about possible costumes. She'd said that her cousin would have been a better person to ask, but even though she'd been forced to start going to school again she wasn't doing much outside of that.

I didn't know as much about Parian as I did n about the other Capes. She was reclusive compared to other Capes and wasn't out in the media as much. She mostly did small shows for children or animated mascots for various businesses for a fee.

I was a little envious of her; it would be nice to have a power that I could make legitimate money from. Stealing from criminals was risky and wasn't technically legal. I was technically stealing evidence, which was frowned on, even if the law often deliberately turned a blind eye to it.

Taking a deep breath, I made sure my mask was in place and I opened the door to the dry cleaner. Laserdream stepped in behind me. We both squinted into the dimness and I wondered what had happened to the lights.

This time in the middle of February the sun went down before five thirty. It was twilight outside and that made the interior even darker than it normally would have been.

There a strange chemical smell. I'd rarely been to a dry cleaner before except on before mom's funeral. We weren't exactly the kind of family that used clothes that needed dry cleaning. Smelling it now made me feel oddly sad, but that feeling was overwhelmed by a growing sense of apprehension.

It was dark and quiet...too quiet. I couldn't hear any of the machines in the back and I couldn't hear the sounds of anyone moving.

My fear sense told me nothing.

"Hello?" I asked. My voice echoed, and I felt a little uneasy. If they were closed the door would have been locked.

Laserdream repeated what I said and then lifted one hand. Her hand began to glow, throwing shadows over everything around us.

"I didn't know you could do that," I said, surprised.

She smirked. "Most Capes don't tell everything they can do. Being a flashlight isn't exactly ground breaking."

She wasn't that good as a flashlight either. The light was only a little lighter than the glow sticks I'd seen people using sometimes during Halloween. It left everything wreathed in shadows and I was uncomfortably aware of just what kind of target it made us. I carefully stepped a little away from her.

As we made my way through racks of newly pressed clothes, the chemical smell grew stronger, but I also smelled something else, an undertone that immediately made my hackles rise. It was a coppery smell, one I didn't recognize.

I heard Crystal gasp and I turned.

Parian was a dark skinned young woman, something I should not have been able to tell except that her mask was laying cracked beside her. She was leaning against a wall, her lifeless eyes staring horribly like those of a doll.

The top of her head was gone, and blood had sprayed against the wall behind her and in a hemisphere around her body. Her legs were sprawled out and there was a stench of death everywhere now that we were close.

I found myself gagging; the smell caught in my nose.

Crystal on the other hand stood frozen, motionless. It had to be worse for her, she'd at least known the woman casually. She didn't saw anything for a moment.

"Just like Rune..." she murmured.

"What?" I asked sharply.

"Rune was murdered like this in the hospital. A lot of the PRT agents sent to guard her were also killed."

"I hadn't heard anything about this," I said, feeling alternate feelings of horror and relief.

I wasn't a murderer! A weight that I hadn't even realized had been on my shoulders vanished as I realized that I wasn't directly responsible for Rune's death.

However...if this had been done twice, then there was a parahuman serial killer out there, probably targeting female capes.

"Part of the reason the PRT exists is to keep the public calm about Capes," she said. "Telling them there is a vicious murderer, possibly a serial killer stalking the streets is going to be destabilizing."

"They told you?" I asked.

"Professional courtesy,' she said. "Especially if whoever it is is targeting female Capes."

"So...what are we supposed to do now?" I asked. The only bodies I'd ever been around were the injured bodies of my victims. Mom had had a closed casket funeral and I couldn't remember the other funerals I'd been to because I was too young.

"We don't touch anything," she said. "The last thing we want to do is contaminate any evidence."

"What if whoever did it is still around?" I asked. The only fear I felt was what was coming from Crystal, but someone who could do something like this wouldn't be afraid of much.

"We need to get out of here and make the call,' she said. "And this time you need to stay around to be questioned. They have a bad history of assuming that anyone who runs is guilty."

* * *

Armsmaster in investigative mode was a little terrifying, and I found myself wilting under his gaze.

"You've never been here before?" he asked.

I shook my head. "I don't have much of a costume and Laserdream convinced me that Parian would be able to help me.'

"So you didn't kill her?" he asked.

"No! I'm not even sure how it was done...I don't have any kind of power that would let me do something like that."

"And no Tinkertech?"

"Do you know how much Tinkertech costs?" I asked incredulously. "I've looked. If I could afford Tinkertech I'd already have a great costume."

"So you aren't a Tinker yourself?" he asked.

I shook my head. "I'm not a Tinker."

"What _are_ your powers exactly?" he asked.

I'd heard that he had a lie detector in his costume somewhere and so I'd been careful to be truthful without giving too much away.

"Is that a question I have to answer?" I asked. "I've already told you I don't have any powers to take the top of someone's head off."

"Were you the one who assaulted a pair of Merchants three weeks ago?"

I stared at him coldly. "Should you be asking me about things that don't pertain to this case? If you do, I think I'd like my lawyer."

"Did you kill Rune?"

"I did not kill Rune," I said firmly. I was pleased to be say that honestly even though being questioned in the alley behind the dry cleaners wasn't my idea of a good place for an interrogation.

Armsmaster had wanted to drag me down to the PRT but I'd refused. The last thing I needed was them fingerprinting me and subjecting me to other tests. He'd wanted to insist, but Miss Militia had intervened.

I'd seen enough TV shows to assume they were playing good cop, bad cop.

He'd seemed disgruntled about the whole thing, and he seemed irritable now. I suspected that he'd hoped I'd be the person to have killed Parian, which would have been an easy win.

"Where were you between the hours of fifteen thirty and seventeen thirty?"

"Are you asking me to reveal my secret identity?" I asked. "Because if you are, we are going to have a problem."

"Is that a threat?" he asked, stepping forward.

I shook my head, but as I did I ran through what my possible responses to him would be. His Halberd was deadly, and from what I'd heard he was a deadly companion.

However, I'd moved my fingers in a quick rune against his wrist when we'd shaken hands earlier, lightly enough that he wouldn't have been able to feel it through his armor. If he attacked me I planned to launch his armor into the sky. Given that he was not known to be able to fly, I suspected that would make the encounter end rather shortly.

Miss Militia was harder. She undoubtedly knew about Shadow Stalker's vulnerabilities, and she could easily create all kinds of electrical stun weapons. I'd have to slip through the wall of the building and hope there weren't too many electrical wires.

Escaping then would be a matter of using my power on my feat and flying away. The last thing I wanted to do was permanently harm either of them.

Alternately I could simply bludgeon her with Armsmaster's power armor with him caught helplessly inside. That ran the risk of her being faster than me and shooting me, so fleeing seemed like the better plan.

"I don't make threats," I said, knowing that his lie detection software would reveal that as at least a partial lie.

The theater I was using in my other identity was all about threats, but it was more than just a way to ramp my strength up. I was safer if every one of my targets was afraid because that meant I knew where they were. I didn't have to be worried about being blindsided by a guy with a gun hiding in a closet somewhere.

"You should join the Wards," he said finally. "Independent capes don't last long on the street."

He'd just accused me of cutting two women's heads open and removing their brains. Were they that hard up that they'd accept just anyone into the program?

They'd accepted Shadow Stalker, so the answer was probably yes.

"I don't think it's for me," I said. Any group that had Sophia Hess in it was a group I had no interest in joining.

Explaining why I didn't want to join would inevitably lead back to my own secret identity. Worse, given my connection to Sophia they'd be one step closer to realizing what I had done to her. I had to keep my answers short and simple and hope that he didn't realize that I was answering some questions less truthfully than others.

"We'd ask that you not reveal what you saw today to anyone," he said.

"Why?" I asked. "You don't think young Cape women deserve to know that there is someone coming for them? At least give them a chance to defend themselves."

"What happens when the public decides that parahumans are too dangerous to have around?" he asked. "Talk about a parahuman serial killer and you'll cause people to panic."

"Maybe they should panic," I said, but at his expression I sighed. "Fine. I won't tell any of the Capes I know unless I absolutely have to."

"You won't go to the press?"

I shook my head. "I promise I'll keep it under wraps."

"I'm sorry to inform you that Blackjack is already taken," he said. He handed me a business card. "You should come up with your own name or the PRT will assign one and some of them aren't particularly flattering."

Considering that the PRT had people named Chubster and Clockblocker, I believed it.

In the end they let me go, even though I sensed that Armsmaster wanted to take me in. I'd gotten away with only a few horrific memories and the knowledge that someone out there was taking people's brains.

I decided that I needed to find a real brute, someone with some good defenses and fast. After all, I was young, parahuman and female, and I was alone as well.

Getting back in the game was going to be important, even if it risked revealing what I could do. Hopefully they'd believe that I and my other identity were two different people. That way, if things got too hot I could simply abandon the other identity.

As I ran away from the site of the crime, my mind was racing, filled with plans.


	10. Fractured

Crouching on the roof I stared down at the drug house.

I'd been out almost every night for the last week and a half tracking down Empire drug houses. I was getting better at being stealthy, and now that I could fly it was easier to follow people in cars as they went about their business.

Spending a week doing nothing but watching the coming and going of Empire thugs had made me impatient, but I'd promised Dad. I couldn't trust myself with Lung's power and Oni Lee would murder me before I even had a chance to react, and so I was avoiding ABB territory.

The Merchants would seem to be the easiest targets, but they didn't have many Capes, and I wasn't sure I wanted Skidmark's power. I wouldn't mind stealing Squealer's power, but Tinkers were hard to predict and she might well have something I couldn't deal with.

Even though the Empire had declared war on someone, they didn't know that I was the one who had attacked Rune. What they did have was a lot of Capes...capes who I wanted badly to take.

Whoever was cutting heads open would come after my other identity sooner or later, and I wanted to be ready to defend myself. It had occurred to me to hunt outside of Brockton Bay, but I didn't know how to find the Capes in other cities any better than I knew how to find them here.

I had decided that the best way to find Capes was to lure them to me. If I attacked enough of the Empires locations, eventually they would send Capes to deal with me. The scary thing was that they would likely send multiple Capes, and I wasn't sure I'd be able to deal with them.

With that in mind, I'd worked on plans for escape before I'd even attacked the first location. One of the lessons I was learning in Escrima training was to always have a route of escape planed out where ever you went.

I'd bought a nightvision scope before I'd started surveilling the Empire locations along with some other equipment.

When I was ready, I began attacking locations. I made sure to play the music before every encounter, knowing that word would get around and the fear they faced would make every one of them light up to my fear sense.

I was hoping that the thought of facing an unknown Cape would give whatever Cape attackers I was facing at least a little anxiety, but I wasn't counting on that.

I'd developed a strategy to attack the houses. Most of them had outside electrical boxes and shortly before I would commence my attack I would use Rune's powers to break into the boxes and I'd shut down all the power.

In the darkness that ensued, I'd telekinetically open my watch, which I'd hidden outside.

As people fired blindly, I'd go shadow and enter from the roof, which usually didn't have the kind of electrical lines that the walls did, and I'd launch the ball bearings. Even though I couldn't see any better in the darkness than they could, I always made sure my eyes had adjusted to the darkness while their eyes were still adjusting.

Even better, I didn't need to see because I could simply use my fear sense to locate them. I didn't even stumble over things in the dark because I simply shadowed through them.

In the darkness and confusion they didn't stand a chance.

This was the fourth night I was coming out, and I hadn't seen a single cape yet. I had dufflebags filled with thirty thousand dollars under my bed. Dad wanted to get a safe but thought that getting one might alert criminals that we had something worth stealing.

I'd made a discovery that was groundbreaking three nights ago.

The more fear I was feeding off, the better my other powers worked. Apparently the power I'd taken wasn't just about gaining strength through fear. It was about magnifying power. Since the skinhead hadn't had any other powers, strength was all that was enhanced.

I'd actually managed to telekinetically manipulate a fifth item, one more than my usual limit of four. It had been a house with an unusual number of people who were afraid and they had been more terrified than usual, but it had still happened.

It had huge implications for my other powers. The one time I could imagine where people would be the most terrified would be an Endbringer situation. Thousands of people being terrified to a degree I'd never experienced...I couldn't imagine how much power that would give me. If I was lucky, it might be enough.

However, it also made the fear even more alluring. Strength alone had been bad enough, but being able to have my other powers be more powerful or more versatile? It wouldn't take much for it to become an addiction.

Watching through the night vision goggles I decided that the people I was targeting had settled down enough for me to start my attack. They were watching the fuse box; apparently even racists could learn a thing or two, but they only had two guards, both of whom looked disinterested.

The problem with being a guard was that it was impossible to remain perfectly alert at all times. Humans weren't designed for that. Attention flagged, thoughts wandered and it didn't take long for people to stop being alert, especially those who were not trained soldiers.

These weren't.

I was laying crouching on the roof behind them, close enough that I could hear what they were saying. People tended not to look up, even people who were expecting Capes, and getting on the roof of the house had been easy flying in shadow form. In the darkness I was barely visible at all.

Switching to shadow form I dropped behind them. There wasn't much room, but I reached out and touched the back of their shirts; both were wearing hoodies because of the weather. Neither could feel me as I traced runes on the back of their jackets.

A moment later both hoodies constricted tightly. Rune's power was able to lift tons, so neither man had a change. They gagged and gasped for air and I watched dispassionately as they tried to grab for their guns only to have their arms tighten to their sides leaving them unable to move.

It didn't take long for them to fall unconscious. I turned them over telekinetically and zip tied them from behind.

I then turned to the electric junction box. Touching the lock on the outside, I snapped it open.

Hearing something snap behind me, I turned. I felt a massive explosion of pain in my solar plexus and I dropped to the ground. My legs felt like they were made out of lead and I couldn't breathe. I couldn't understand what was happening. Had I been shot? Had I been found by the Empire?

I strained to make myself look up, and I saw a pair of legs clad in dark blue spandex with a diamond print. Whoever it was was massively muscled, and before I could try to do anything they reached down and grabbed my shoulder with fingers that felt like a vice. I could feel my shoulder creaking, strained almost to the breaking point as he lifted me with one hand so that my feet dangled.

Still unable to catch my breath, I wasn't prepared for the punch to my ribs. I felt something fracture and break in my chest.

I clawed at him ineffectually, but I'd have had an easier time moving a truck. He was superhumanly strong and there was no fear I could feed on anywhere nearby to match him.

"Why did you do it?" he hissed. His blue face mask covered everything but his eyes, but even without being able to see his face I could tell he was trembling with rage.

I couldn't speak, still unable to breath, and he reached up and grabbed me by the throat. His hand began to tighten, and I clawed at his hand.

Suddenly I realized that I was going to die if I didn't do something. I scrabbled for my pepper spray and brought it up to his eyes, spraying him. I almost screamed as some of the spray blasted back on me. My face burned and I suddenly found it even harder to breathe, but he had it infinitely worse. I sprayed him directly in the eyes and I doubted his mask did much to filter the spray.

He let go of me and I fell to the ground gasping for breath. He staggered back, gagging and his eyes immediately swelling shut.

It was only a moment before he stood though, a murderous look in what I could see of his eyes.

He charged at me and I rolled. His fist went through the electrical box and all the lights went out.

I could feel fear suddenly sprouting from inside the building, and I gasped as I felt sudden strength flowing into by body. As damaged as I was, it wasn't much, but it was enough to rise to my feet. We only had moments before the men inside were out and shooting at us.

Switching to shadow form seemed like my only option, but my head was muggy and I couldn't concentrate enough to make the transition. I tried to dodge to the side when he grabbed for me again.

We were both staggering around like drunks, but I was the one who was more damaged. Even if neither of us had had powers I'd have been at a huge disadvantage simply as a matter of size. I grabbed for my baton and tried to smash it across his arm, but he didn't even seem to notice it. He went for my throat again.

I found myself choking and gasping for breath. People were coming, and they'd shoot us both. He'd survive but I wouldn't.

Grabbing his arm with both hands, I moved my fingers over the material of his costume. I tried to use it to pull him back telekinetically, but he was stronger than the material of his costume. His entire costume ripped away, leaving him standing in a face mask and in a pair of tighty whities.

I grabbed his arm again and I pulled.

His body seemed to shrivel right in front of me, going from a massively buff figure of a man to a scrawny boy who couldn't have been more than my age.

Suddenly I could feel every organ in my body. I knew instinctively how I could change them, heal them, make them better. It would take time, but the awareness was there.

He dropped to the ground, staring at his suddenly skinny arms even as I heard the sharp retorts of bullets.

I felt something pinging against my side, but I barely felt it. I turned to face the men who were firing at me and I leaped at them.

Even though I could still barely move I went flying through the air. I tried to be gentle, in part because it hurt to move, but the men I grabbed went flying, hitting the wall. There were five of them, and I dropped them in the space of half a minute.

It was still difficult to breathe, and I could sense more coming. Bending down was agony, but I managed to touch my shoes.

A moment later I returned. I grabbed the boy by one arm, and I flew up into the air. He gave an agonized scream as I undoubtedly pulled his arm out of its socket.

We went over the house, and as the men inside the building swarmed, I pulled the boy beneath me as we flew through the sky.

He kept screaming, so I landed in a park a half mile away. It was abandoned at this hour. As I dropped him he scrambled away.

"Why did you attack me?" I said. It was difficult to talk with my throat injured and bruised, and my voice sounded horse and weird.

"You killed Parian," he said. "Armsmaster warned me about you."

"What?" I asked flatly.

"The Protectorate has been quietly telling Capes about what happened to Rune and Parian," he said. "And Armsmaster told me personally that you were the best suspect."

My mind went blank for a moment. They thought that I had done...

"You've been attacking Empire safe houses for the last few days. I figured if I waited at one of them long enough I'd catch you."

"Now you've caught me," I growled. "What are you going to do?"

I felt angry at him. I was in pain and he'd attacked me without provocation. The fact that he seemed to think he was a hero would probably bother me later, but for the moment all I felt was anger.

Armsmaster has been nothing but a jerk to me from the very beginning.

"What did you do to me?" he asked. He stared at his thin arms. "It's all gone...I can't feel anything."

"I defended myself," I said.

"Is it going to come back?" he asked, staring up at me fearfully. "This is some kind of temporary Trump effect, right?"

I looked at him for a moment. His eyes were swollen it looked like he could barely see.

Slowly I shook my head.

"Are you going to kill me now?" he asked.

I leaned forward. "I do not attack the innocent. I do not murder helpless girls."

"And me?"

"You are foolish, but you have already paid the price. I will do nothing else to you."

It was a cold evening and he was already shivering uncontrollably. My pain had made it possible to ignore the face that he was mostly naked.

He was making a small sound. I winced as I leaned forward trying to understand what he was saying. I straightened suddenly as I realized that he was crying quietly.

"I will fly you somewhere closer to home," I said finally, uneasy.

As it turned out, carrying a nearly naked teenage boy bridal style through the air when you were in pain was incredibly awkward and embarrassing.

* * *

Returning home, I slipped through the back door. It took me almost a minute to concentrate enough to slip into my shadow form and when I did I felt a shock, almost like I'd been hit with icy water.

The pain was completely gone. In the thirty minutes I'd been experienced it apparently I'd lost track of just how much pain I was in. The freedom from pain was like a balm.

The moment I slipped back into my normal form on the other side, the pain came crashing back, more shocking than ever for the brief moment of relief.

I managed to float up the stairs to my room, carefully so as not to wake Dad.

Unzipping my hoodie, I found it difficult to move my arm well enough to slip my arm out of it. I knew that lifting my arms over my head enough to pull the undershirt off would be impossible, so I concentrated again and my clothes fell to the floor as I went shadow without them.

I stepped forward and the bulletproof vest thumped to the floor. I froze, but I didn't feel the anxiety from Dad I would have expected had he heard a thump from another part of the house in the middle of the night, so I relaxed.

Now that I no longer had adrenaline dulling my pain, it was growing worse, but I managed to bend enough to touch the vest and pull it from the pile of my clothes.

The plates on it were fractured and cratered, and I realized that it had probably saved my life. I'd been lucky that shards of ceramic hadn't pierced my side, puncturing my lung.

I looked closer and I saw that there was blood on the edges of the shards. I reached down and grimaced as I felt blood coming from my side. I coughed and felt agonizing pain.

Staggering back nude against my bed, I closed my eyes.

Whoever I had just taken power from had been able to control his body. That could be used for healing, I knew instinctively, although it wasn't automatic. He'd probably had time to practice, so I had to learn how to manage it on my own.

My world shrank to the interior of my body, to organs and parts I hadn't even known I had. The lungs and ribs were my first priority, and after that my shoulder and the inflammation from the pepper spray on my face. It was going to take some trial and error.

After a time I felt blessed oxygen flooding my body and I was finally able to take a deep breath. My mind cleared and everything started going faster. My bones knit and my traumatized muscles and tendons healed.

Once the injuries from the night healed I went ahead and healed the multitude of small injuries I'd suffered in Escrima training.

Opening my eyes, I realized that an hour had passed as I healed myself. I began to shake as I realized how close I had come to dying at the hands of a hero.

I'd been so confident that I could take on members of the Empire when a single hero had almost beaten me to death just by catching me by surprise. I'd been overconfident in my fear sense. He'd been sure he was invulnerable and so hadn't been afraid of me at all.

The funny thing was that now I probably could take them on. I was finally actually a brute. Staring at myself naked in the mirror I realized that I no longer had to keep the features I'd been displeased with.

I focused on my face, and the bones and the skin shifted. The flesh on my face pulled against my skull, making me look skeletal. The flesh changed as I further manipulated it.

The boy had made himself look huge and imposing.

I was going to use the same power to look like a horror. I no longer needed a mask, and from now on I didn't need protective clothing...except for goggles. Pepper spray was apparently still painful even with powers like these.

The boy had had a strange sort of touch telekinisis that replicated massive strength and made him tremendously tough. He also had biokinisis that let him change himself.

I was going to need both. For all I knew the boy was calling the Protectorate right now, telling them what I had done to him, and they apparently believed I had murdered two women on top of hat stealing powers from one of their Wards.

Everything rested on me getting stronger faster now. It was the only way I was going to survive.


	11. Costume

The costume was perfect.

After the death of Parian, Crystal had given me the number of a costume designer in Boston and I'd had Dad drive me there for an appointment. What she'd come up with made me incredibly pleased.

I'd wanted to create as much of a divide between my current identity and the identity the PRT was calling Charon. Since he was wearing black, I decided to keep the white I'd originally appeared in.

My new costume was made out of white leather with Kevlar inserts. I didn't really need that anymore but I'd heard there were people in the world who negated powers. If I met any of them I didn't want to be left unprotected.

The costume was composed of white leather pants and a white leather jerkin with a hood. I would continue to wear a kerchief over my mouth, but the designer suggested that I keep several different ones for different occasions. I would add a domino mask so that I would be even less recognizable.

An underlayer existed, both to make the outfit more comfortable and to help keep the costume clean. Sweaty leather probably wouldn't make me particularly popular.

The designer had a list of instructions for me about how to clean the costume and how to maintain it.

For the first time I actually felt like a superhero and not simply someone running around in a hoodie beating people.

"Is it everything you hoped for?" Dad asked as I slipped into the car. He'd been waiting a block away in the car for the last forty five minutes as I'd slipped away to the designers.

"Three thousand dollars and worth every penny," I said.

He winced, and I wondered how he would feel if I told him I'd gotten two outfits at that price. I wasn't exactly hurting for money, and even though he hadn't wanted to accept it, I'd slipped him money to help with the expenses.

We'd been paying cash for groceries and eating out a little more and he'd been leaving the money we weren't spending in the bank.

Buying a whole bunch of new things would have been a red flag that something was wrong, both for the authorities and for the criminals in our neighborhood. The last thing we wanted was to be seen carting in a big screen television, because I'd find the thirty thousand under my bed gone and people with questions at my door not long after.

We'd already been to a theatrical design company that sold body harnesses that let people do flying effects on stage. Using Rune's power on my shoes was uncomfortable, required me to bend down and took up two slots that could have been done in just one. The harness would fit under both my costumes and with it I'd be able to fly. The fact that it was another sixteen hundred dollars wasn't something I'd shared with Dad.

"Now to our next stop," he said.

I pulled off my white coat (I wasn't wearing my new costume in the car with Dad, even if I was in a different city) even as I began to focus on changing my body.

As we drove through the city I grew taller and more massive. From what I could tell no one had been able to tell the gender of my second identity and I intended to keep it that way. I focused on my face in the mirror of the sun visor.

Duplicating the faces of specific people had proven to be a difficult prospect. It required a level of exactness that I wasn't capable of yet. I suspected it had less to do with the power and more to do with my own lack of artistic abilities.

What I'd discovered was that getting a face subtly off was disturbing in a visceral way. It was disturbing and worrisome.

I could, however, take on generic faces. I did so, and by the time we'd driven halfway across the city I looked like a masculine figure, even though I hadn't changed my genitalia or my breasts, which were small enough to go unnoticed.

Making people believe my second identity was male would further the idea that we were two separate people.

I'd discovered that once I'd created a particular face and practiced it a few times I could switch into it fairly quickly. Creating a new face took a lot of work.

My plan was to subtly change my features even in my female identity so that I wouldn't be mistaken for Taylor Hebert. I'd make myself a little taller and a little fuller figured in that form to make me more unmistakably feminine to better contrast with my male form.

That it was a little flattering wouldn't hurt either.

Dad stopped two blocks away from the next location, stopping in an alley. I slipped out of the car and quickly made my way to the motorcycle shop in question. My body in this form was the size I planned for my Charon form to take, even if the face was normal instead of horribly changed.

It took thirty minutes to find what I wanted; black motorcycle armor over which I would wear a black leather jacket and tight leather pants. The jacket had a black cloth hood; I didn't like including similar aspects to both costumes but I figured they were different enough that no one would notice.

I actually felt more dangerous in this outfit, more manly, whatever that felt like.

This time I stepped out into the sunlight wearing the outfit. It made me feel good and powerful, but it wasn't particularly distinctive without the changes to my face.

I headed back to the car, where Dad was waiting. He was listening to talk radio; I could hear people debating parahuman rights and responsibilities, something I was particularly interested in.

He looked at me for a long moment and then said, "I never thought I'd see the day when I'd be taking my son to a leather shop."

I scowled at him and stuck out my tongue.

"I could have gotten a ball gag as part of the costume...I suspect that would have horrified people for all the wrong reasons."

His head snapped around. "When did you hear about?"

"I made the mistake of looking up leather outfits when I was trying to come up with a costume," I said. I winced. "I saw some things I'd rather not have seen. They certainly horrified me, but they probably weren't the image I was looking for."

He looked distinctly uncomfortable. "If you have any questions...?"

I shook my head quickly. "I don't really want to know. I really, really don't want to know."

Thinking about boys wasn't even on my radar; I had too much to worry about without having to deal with things of which I hadn't really understood the appeal.

Besides, I was still too busy playing with my new power to worry about anything extraneous. Every time I got a new power it was like Christmas.

This power in particular opened entire new worlds to me.

Being able to experience my internal physiology at all times meant that it was easy to get distracted so that I had to actively pay attention to what was going on around me. It was fascinating, and I had to resist the temptation to experiment in public. I could lift bone to the surface of my skin, create chemicals to help me heal burns...the possibilities seemed endless, even if none of them were as fast as I would like.

I'd almost died but the tradeoff was worth it. I now had the power I'd been craving, and it meant that I had the means to get more. All I had to do was find people.

Even if Hookwolf or some of the others could injure me I'd be able to heal if I got away. I no longer had to worry about my identity being revealed because I'd been injured by some petty thug the night before.

I worried a little about my Escrima lessons. I'd have to fake my reactions to being hit, and it was possible that he might see right through it. However, I secretly suspected that my teacher already suspected something. Very few girls my age were out trying to use sticks and knives in combat, whatever lies my father had told him.

There was an assessing look in his eyes sometimes. I wondered if the lack of pain would make the training go faster or if it would impair it. My teacher told me that pain made things memories more vivid, and I suspected that it was true.

I wasn't going to completely depend on my fear sense; there were sociopaths among the Empire Capes who likely didn't feel fear at all. I doubted that Oni Lee or Lung did either.

The Merchants might be too intoxicated or high to feel fear, especially their Capes.

Dad kept looking at me, and I could tell that my new power was making him uneasy. He was obviously trying to be supportive, but seeing his daughter's face warp into that of a monster had to be disturbing to him.

I planned to change my face and body on the way back to Brockton Bay, hopefully not disturbing him too much.

I didn't bother telling him how much this outfit cost; I'd bought four of them since they were so much cheaper than the others. I expected these to get much more damaged than the others anyway.

Almost seven thousand dollars had been spent this trip, and yet I didn't feel it had been badly spent. Impressions were everything in the superhero game, and according to Crystal people looked down on heroes who had cheap costumes. They assumed they were newbies.

How people afforded costumes without literally robbing people like I had been I wasn't quite sure.

"You want to get something to eat?" Dad asked.

I nodded. Boston had places to eat that Brockton Bay didn't, and so it was going to be a rare treat to eat someplace new.

Before be could discuss it I heard a sound that made my stomach drop.

Blaring through the air was the sound every person on Earth was familiar with, the sound that no one wanted to hear. Sirens blaring, I could see people already beginning to panic.

The location of the next attack hadn't been announced yet, and so everyone was afraid. The fact that the Endbringer sirens were ringing meant that the attack was in the area. There wouldn't be a lot of time to get to a shelter.

We all knew exactly where the Endbringer shelters were, both in our neighborhoods and in other parts of our city.

Unfortunately we weren't in our city. Boston was unfamiliar to me and Dad, and neither of us knew where the shelters were. I didn't even know where the Protectorate was in this city.

"We've got to get you to s shelter first," I told Dad. "I won't be able to go out there until I know you are safe."

"You don't have to go," Dad said.

I felt the intoxicating feeling of fear filling me with strength. Considering that I was already powerful, I knew I was strong enough to throw cars by this point.

"I get stronger the more people are afraid. People are never more afraid than when the Endbringers are attacking," I said. "I can save a lot of people."

"You could die," he said. "Nobody is as strong as an Endbringer. Even Alexandria is at risk from her."

"I could be."

At his look I shook my head. "Maybe not now, but eventually. Some of my powers multiply my other powers and make them stronger. I may be the only person who actually can stop them."

"That's an even better reason for you not to get killed now," he said.

"I don't have a choice," I said. "People are going to be dying, and if I could have saved them but just stayed where it was safe, what kind of hero would I be?"

He looked like he wanted to argue, but I could see cars crashing as panicked people made multiple errors in judgment trying to get away home to their families or to save themselves.

Endbringer alarms were sounded not just to civilians to go to shelters, but as a call to heroes and villains to come fight. The Protectorate didn't exactly have the villains' numbers and the villains wouldn't have trusted them with the numbers if they did.

The entire world waited with baited breath until the city that was being targeted was being announced.

Dad pulled over quickly. It was apparent we weren't going to be able to go anywhere in the car until this was all resolved. The only reason we were able to find a parking space was the fact that panicked people were trying to leave.

We got out of the car and watched for where people were running. The city natives would know where the local shelters were and the tourists would be following them, just as we planned to do.

I grabbed Dad's hand, and I could feel his fear along with that of everyone else in the city. I was wearing the flying harness; I'd wanted to make sure it would fit in the motorcycle outfits I was planning to wear. I could take us both flying over the city and I'd have been able to see where everyone was going, but carrying Dad it would have risked revealing my identity to someone.

People were running all around us and I could see children crying in the chaos, separated from their parents before people picked them up and went running. Hopefully the people who picked them up were their parents, but there was no way of knowing.

There was a way of knowing where the shelters were, I realized. I pulled Dad into another alley and I closed my eyes. I could sense the fear of everyone in a seven block radius, which meant that I could track the movements of tens of thousands of people.

"What?" Dad asked, but I held up a hand.

There. I could sense a place where everyone was congregating. People were clumping together in one spot, a place I knew had to be an Endbringer shelter.

"I found it," I said.

We ran then, me pulling Dad behind me, but as we reached the shelter they were already pulling the doors shut.

"We're full," someone shouted from inside. "Go to the shelter on 9th street."

People were screaming to be let in, but I knew it was useless. The people inside were afraid, and from what I could feel the shelter really was filled with a mass of humanity.

We ran again. Hopefully not spending time arguing with the people closing the doors would leave us time to get Dad into one of the shelters.

I was deeply conscious of the time. By the time we reached the second shelter twenty minutes had passed. They were already closing the doors, but I pushed Dad forward.

He tried to pull me in with him, but I was strong enough now that he would have had better luck trying to pull a truck.

The doors shut with finality, and I looked around and saw that the streets were quickly emptying around me. The few stragglers were already running, presumably for the next shelter.

I allowed my face to switch into the skull like face I'd decided on for my other identity and I reached inside my jacket, moving my hands in a familiar set of movements over the harness.

A moment later I was in the sky. To my pleasure, the harness worked beautifully.

I wasn't entirely sure I wanted this identity around the heroes and villains. Part of its power was the mystery and fear I was trying to generate and familiarity bred contempt. On the other hand, people might die in the time it took me to get back to the car and find a place to change. If that happened I wouldn't be able to live with myself.

It took me a moment to realize that I had no idea where the Protectorate base was in Boston. In Brockton Bay it was an obvious thing on the skyline, but Protectorate bases weren't all built the same.

I had a phone, though, and it was internet enabled. I looked around me looking for familiar golden arches. I knew that McDonald's had started offering free wifi just four years ago, and I'd been using it at various locations in Brockton Bay.

There were tall buildings everywhere and I couldn't see things the way I'd seen them in Brockton Bay.

I couldn't even stop and ask anyone for directions because the streets were looking like a ghost town by now. I didn't see anyone, although I could feel them gathered in their thousands.

It took me a moment to realize that I could use my fear sense to find the Protectorate, or at least the PRT. I just needed to find a gathering of people who were afraid who weren't huddled in a tiny area.

Five minutes passed as I flew over the city, weaving between buildings as I searched with my senses. Eventually I found it, a tall building surrounded by a large park, presumably so that battles wouldn't damage neighboring buildings.

I landed outside the entrance, where two nervous looking guards stood. Although they had masks covering their faces it was obvious in the way they were standing, in the way that their hands twitched on their weapons. The fact that I could feel their fear growing made it all the more apparent.

"I have come to serve vengeance on the Simurgh," I said. I'd altered my voice to sound deep and horrific.

They looked at one another and one reached for their earpiece, murmuring in a low voice.

Finally one of them turned to me and said, "The fighting started five minutes ago; there aren't any teleporters available to transport you."

I was simultaneously disappointed and relieved. Facing an Endbringer meant I had a very good chance of dying, yet this had to be what my powers were meant for. With the amount of fear I was feeling now I could do almost anything. In a city actually being attacked, I'd have the power of a god.

Was it wrong of me to desire to feel that, at least once?

Dad would be relieved, at least.

"Where?" I asked finally.

"Providence," one of the men said finally. He hesitated. "I don't recognize you. Who are you?"

Now that I knew I wasn't going I realized that giving my name would be the worst thing I could do. The last thing I needed was for Armsmaster and the rest of the PRT to know that I had been in Boston.

"Vengeance," I said dramatically.

I wasn't sure why I said it; I knew it was over the top as I said it. The men I was talking to seemed to take it seriously though.

Before they could ask me any more questions I soared into the air.

I decided to head back to the car and find a place to change back into my civilian clothes. It wasn't like anything was going to happen in the meantime. The Endbringer truce among capes was part of the unwritten rules, but there were legal issues related as well.

Crimes committed during Endbringer attacks were punished much more harshly than at other times. There had been issues in early years of people staying out of the shelters so they could loot, which made other people afraid to leave their homes, increasing the death rates.

Assaults during Endbringer attacks were punished especially harshly. During the stress of an attack, with huge masses of people trapped in tiny spaces it was easy to start brawls which could result in hundreds of injuries.

That being said, I could sense people in the city who weren't in the shelters; individual little dots of light in a vast sea of nothingness.

I was heading back to the car when I heard a boom. One of the buildings was on fire, and I could sense at least ten people inside.


	12. Darkness

I made some slight changes to the last chapter...changing the location of the attack to Providence, which would explain the sirens and people's reactions to them because the attack was local. Thanks for the input.

The last thing I needed was for my Charon form to be seen as someone rescuing people instead of terrorizing them, so I changed my face as I flew through the air, hopefully to something suitably generic. It probably looked vaguely horrifying as I hadn't had time to work out all the details, but hopefully the connection wouldn't be made.

After all, a lot of people wore motorcycle accidents, even heroes.

As I approached the building I realized it might be for the best. I didn't want my other identity known to be visiting Boston either, and there was a chance that the Boston PRT agents might be able to identify my Charon identity.

Whatever justifications I made, there wasn't any time to change outfits.

Sensing the terror of the people inside, I wouldn't have any problem locating them even in thick smoke or fire. Surviving the smoke would be something completely different. I didn't have any particular powers allowing me to breathe in smoke, and while I could probably use biokinisis to change my lungs to make them more efficient or at least create filters it would take trial and error and time I currently didn't have.

My best bet would be to be in and out as quickly as possible. To that end, as I approached the building I sped up. I put my arms in front of my face and I plowed through a window.

I'd read once that to go through a window sized sheet of tempered glass an object had to be going forty miles per hour. I was going at least sixty. I could have gone faster than that, but I wasn't confident of my ability to stop quickly or maneuver easily. Images of me ripping completely out of my harness leaving me in my underwear were enough to make me slow down.

The glass shattered into thousands of tiny pieces as it was supposed to instead of the jagged knives that untempered glass would have become, and I was inside the building.

I felt the impact on the wall on the other side of the room as well and I went through it.

Apparently stopping from sixty miles an hour within twenty feet was something that would take a lot more practice or maybe even a specialized power.

I probably should have just punched the glass and flown in, but I'd always wanted to break through a wall like Alexandria in the old stories.

Now that I had, with no one around to see it it seemed a little empty.

I'd broken through into some sort of dining room. It was a Thursday night and the dining room was thankfully empty. It wasn't a restaurant; it had two twenty foot tables with heavy tablecloths. I could detect people inside the next room, however, and I floated over the table to a closet.

I pulled open the door easily; with the fear enhanced power I had now I probably could have thrown it though the wall and all the way to the protectorate headquarters.

Two Latino women dressed as cleaning staff were huddled in the closet. They screamed as they saw me and began to speak in a rapid language I didn't understand.

I hadn't started my language classes at Winslow yet; Winslow only offered the usual French, German and Spanish...it didn't have the budget for more. I'd heard that Arcadia also taught Japanese and Mandarin, ironic since Winslow was closer to ABB territory.

Even if I'd had a choice of languages I probably have learned German. Boston had a much larger Latino population than Brockton Bay, and even that was only something like ten percent. At least with German I'd be able to know what the Empire stooges were saying to each other.

"I'm here to help," I say in a deep voice.

They screamed again, and I wasn't sure whether it was their fear or problems with the language that kept them from understanding me. Either way I didn't have time to negotiate with them.

I stared at them for a moment. If I lifted them by the arms there was a good chance I'd hurt them badly. If I grabbed them by the shirts I could hang them. By the pants would lead to the atomic wedgie I was glad never to have received from Sophia.

The material of their outfits was thin and likely to rip. I needed to create some kind of a harness.

I turned and returned to the next room. I could hear popping sounds and the groans of materials I grabbed the first tablecloth and ran my fingers over it. It moved at my command even as I was touching the second tablecloth.

I returned to the woman, the cloths having wrapped themselves into long, snakelike pieces of rope. They screamed as they saw the ropes rearing up behind me, but there was nothing they could do.

A moment later we were outside floating for the pavement, the women screaming and flailing, which seemed like a poor life choice to me. All that was between her and certain death was a slim piece of rope and if she wriggled out of it she'd be in trouble.

As soon as they reached the ground I was on my way back up the building. This time I simply smashed a window with my arm. I tried flying into the room, but the heat was intense enough that I could feel it even through the aura that was protecting me. As I opened the window there was an explosion and the fire grew even more intense from the oxygen that was entering the room.

The people in the center of this floor were afraid, but not nearly afraid enough for the fire that was all around them.

I went to the level above and tried to break through the floor to get to the people in the center. The floor was easy, but I found a solid metal wall. It had to be multiple inches thick because it was too thick for me to punch through.

Empowered, Rune's telekinisis would probably be enough, but I was afraid that I'd make things worse. These people were in something like a huge vault, and they were probably safer than the people outside of the vault.

I decided that focusing on the floors above the fire on the theory that the people on the floors below the fire could get out on their own. The people in the vault I would save for last.

There weren't many, fortunately. A couple of office workers working late and trapped when the elevator failed, a handyman called out to work on the elevator, a couple of sketchy looking people that I didn't have time to work out the details. I ignored the fire itself in favor of dealing with the people who were trapped above it.

I could sense the people in the floors below escaping, presumably through the stairwells.

By the time I'd gotten the last of them out the smoke was so thick that I could not see anything. It reached the floor, and the last people I brought out looked like they needed oxygen but there was nothing I could do for them.

Once I had gotten everyone out there was a crowd of almost twenty people including the stragglers from the lower floors. I informed the people I'd left on the ground that the Simurgh was attacking Providence not Boston, realizing that they'd be terrified to be outside of the shelters. I decided to attack the fire itself. It was the only way I'd be able to reach the people in the vault.

I didn't have any power to control fire, but I did have options. Even unenhanced by fear Rune's powers were able to lift almost twenty tons, well above what the PHO had thought she was capable of. I suspected that like many Capes she had been hiding the true extent of her power for a time when she got into a fight she couldn't win.

However, water weighed a massive amount. Twenty tons of water would be less than five thousand gallons

Normally Rune's power only worked on discrete objects, but enhanced as it was now, I knew I wasn't bound by some of its usual limitations.

I dropped to the ground and warned the group of people I'd rescued to get back.

Normally thirty seconds was the longest it took to trace a rune for the largest objects Rune could affect. I kept tracing for more than two minutes. The power built and built inside me as I traced on the lawn out in front of the building.

A massive amount of soil and earth rose from the ground in front of the building. While the grass was flammable I was banking on the earth to snuff the fire out by depriving it of oxygen.

The fear was fading; apparently people were getting the news that Boston wasn't the target. I knew I didn't have much time, so I rose to the level of the fire, the earth and sand rising up behind me. I gestured and every window on that level shattered.

A tsunami of earth blew into the level, covering everything with a layer of sand a half a foot thick. Flimsy interior walls were destroyed as the sand inevitably made its way into everything. I felt bad about that, but I suspected that most of those walls had been burned already.

I was careful not to use so much force that the load bearing walls were destroyed. That would make the entire building come down, something I wasn't planning on doing.

Glancing down I could see that a couple of the people I'd rescued were taking pictures with their phones. I winced. I had no doubt that the PRT would get access to those pictures, and they'd be alarmed by how much power I was demonstrating, especially as they had no way of knowing that the power I was showing was only temporary.

Carefully I floated inside. It was difficult to breathe; the open windows were helping with the smoke but there were particles of earth and sand filling the air. Normally I wouldn't have entered for quite some time but there were people inside and I could feel their fear.

With the walls stripped away I could see that the center of the building was some kind of vault. It was massive, much bigger than any bank vault I'd ever seen, and from the size of it the entire building must have been designed to support its weight.

Floating around the vault I saw that there was a heavy door that had been melted. The heat from the fire wouldn't have done it; there was a hole burned in the door a foot thick, and it looked like it had been melted from the inside.

This was the source of the fire; I was certain of it.

No light was coming from inside the hole; there was only darkness. I didn't put my face up to the hole for fear that whatever had made the hole might happen again. Whether it was another parahuman or malfunctioning tinkertech I wanted no part of it.

Still, there were people inside who were afraid, and I couldn't ignore that. The metal of the door was so hot that it felt hot even through the aura that was protecting me. I ran my fingers over its surface despite that, and after thirty seconds the entire door pulled out of it's place in the wall. Rune's power would have been strong enough to do it on its own, but even though the fear was fading from the shelters nearby there was still enough of it to make a difference.

The interior of the vault was completely dark. There was a small hallway leading to another door; the whole thing was mechanical and sterile. The walls were made of metal and I felt a strange sense of foreboding as I approached it.

I didn't have any power that would let me make light, but I couldn't let that stop me. I'd managed to move without seeing through smoke and fire, I could use my fear sense to find the survivors in here.

With the only light being that reflected from outside everything was dim. My eyes adjusted faster than those of a human, however, and I realized that as a biokinetic I could do something about the darkness.

It took me almost ten minutes of detailed work on my eyes waiting by the entrance, increasing the number of rods in my eyes and watching as color vanished and the world turned black and white. Cats only needed a sixth the light to see that humans did, and I could feel my eyes becoming slitted.

The extra time allowed the smoke to be blown away as well, and for at least some of the dust to settle. I'd been trying to alter my lungs to be more efficient but it had been distracting and difficult.

The fear, however faded during that time so that by the time I was ready I was almost back to normal. The people in the shelters remained where they were however. Although the Simurgh usually focused on one city, I guessed that no one was willing to take the chance that she might change her mind.

Finally I floated into the small hallway. I'd expected to feel the fear vanishing as time went on, but it was only getting worse. The people inside were moving, some rather erratically and I knew something was happening and I needed to go in.

Pushing the inner door open, I smelled a strange smell that made my hackles rise. It was the smell of vomit mixed with a powerful smell of an unwashed body, mixed with something else I couldn't identify.

It aroused atavistic fears and part of me wanted to turn back. However, there were still people alive inside, and I needed to find them.

Even with night vision six times as powerful as a normal person I could barely see my hand in front of my face. Light was coming in from behind me, but it was only the light from the city, and if I turned a corner I suspected I would be in absolute darkness.

There were animals that were bioluminescent; with enough time and research I suspected I'd be able to copy that ability. For the moment I had no idea how to do it, and I felt frustrated.

I turned a corner, and I found another door. Pushing it open, I was pleased to see the room I was entering dimly lit by an exit sign that was flickering. There was still power somewhere here; panic rooms tended to have their own supplies.

To me it was like the room was lit up brightly. There was a conference table and a large window covered the wall to my left.

I cautiously floated over to the window and as I stared down I stiffened.

There was a creature on the floor of a large chamber in the room below. The room I was in was thirty feet above the chamber, and it was apparent that much of the center of the room was some kind of elevator, large enough to transport vehicles through the center of the tower.

The creature was the size of an elephant, and it was a horror. There were pieces of animals sticking out of it, and tentacles sticking out of other parts.

There was a girl emerging from the top, and I wasn't sure if she was a victim who was being absorbed into the horrific mass or if she was like a centaur, with a human torso and a body that...wasn't human.

The girl was slumped over and it looked as though she was sleeping. There were massive burns all along her body, but I could see them regenerating even as I watched.

All around her were bodies. They were all deformed in some way, and all of them were completely, horribly naked. Some were relatively normal looking but missing limbs while others were Cronenbergian monstrosities. All of them looked dead, some from burns and others from being bludgeoned and pulled apart.

Nothing looked alive down there. I couldn't use my fear sense on the unconscious unless they happened to be having a nightmare, and even then it would be a pale reflection of the true fear of the waking world.

My head snapped up as I realized that some of the people I'd been tracking were disappearing from my fear sense. Fear didn't vanish immediately; it gradually faded, leaving traces and remnants behind. These people were vanishing suddenly, which meant to me that they were dying.

I pushed myself forward, hoping to be able to save at least some of them.

Bursting into the next room, I saw a room that looked like it was a war zone. Although it was a similar room to the room I'd left, the window looking down into the room below had been completely shattered. The conference table was in pieces and there were bodies on the floor. All of them were just as mutated as the bodies I'd seen in the room with the monster.

There were half a dozen men in the room, all of whom were completely naked. They were surrounding a man who was dressed in a black costume with a red mask and a top hat. All eyes looked at me as I entered the room, and a moment later I felt a moment of disorientation as I was suddenly across the room from where I had been a moment before.

The man in the top hat looked at me for a moment and then said, "Sorry babe."

A moment later he vanished into the room I'd just come out of.

I felt a hand on my shoulder. There was power there, but before I could pull at it I felt myself being twisted and pulled. The world trembled around me as I felt myself being pulled out of it and into somewhere else.


	13. Mirror

Nothing was different around me and everything was. I would have sworn that this was the same room, but the picture window against the wall was still whole and the conference table was still there. The damage I'd seen to the room was gone completely, and the light in the room was tinged red.

The light coming from the exit signs had already been somewhat red, but there was something different and eerie about the light. The air was heavy and still and I felt an uneasiness as I looked around and didn't see any of the naked people I'd seen before.

Worse, the residual fear I'd felt from everyone in the city was completely gone. All that was left was the fear of five figures who were rapidly retreating from the building; I couldn't feel any other fear at all.

Either everyone in the city had vanished all at once or I had jumped forward in time. Even that seemed unlikely as there was always a little anxiety somewhere as people worried about their daily lives.

Despite the looks I wasn't in Boston anymore. I was somewhere else.

I levitated and made my way back through the doorway the man in the top hat had gone through. Looking down through the window I didn't see the monster or any of the creatures I'd seen on the other side; all I saw was an empty room with a large elevator in the middle.

There were lights as I slipped through the passage, but as I slipped outside I instantly noticed that something was wrong.

The entire city was completely dark. The only light came from a blood red moon in the sky, and I couldn't see a single star.

I needed to reach the people who were still afraid. It was possible that they might have some answers about what had happened, and even if they didn't I was here to save them. I'd been puled here by a power and it was possible that whoever had done so would try to come and interrogate us. I'd take his power then and I'd be able to return home, hopefully with the others.

I flew above the houses below. They looked different in the dim light than they had in an active city lit up like a sea of stars. I hadn't yet really been able to enjoy flying; when I'd been using Rune's powers on my shoes I'd been too focused on balancing and not crashing to really enjoy my power.

When I got out I resolved to try to enjoy myself while flying. It was what I had dreamed of as a child more than anything when I'd played Alexandria, and even if this wasn't the kind of flight I'd hoped for, it was the closest I would get.

With my enhanced nightsight I could see five figures on a wide highway below. There were cars parked but there was no movement in the city except for them.

There was a girl running; she was wearing a black costume that had red suns emblazoned on it. She was pushing a girl in a wheelchair at a speed that had to be unsafe, and that girl was slumped over. I hoped that she was all right, but I couldn't be sure. I didn't feel the same fear from her as I felt from the others, so I assumed she had to be unconscious at the very least.

A male figure wearing black armor was throwing something behind him. There were explosions but I couldn't see what he was fighting.

The final member of their group didn't even wear a costume. He was wearing normal clothing, and he had a pistol, which he was firing behind him.

I tried to look to see what they were being attacked by, but all I saw was a nine foot bear standing a block away. It was slashing at something I couldn't see and wounds were appearing on its body.

A moment later it roared in pain and it vanished. I saw the girl in the wheelchair awake with a scream.

I was careful as I flew down to them. I wasn't sure what powers they had, but their costumes meant that I would have at least a little trouble copying three of them. I wasn't even sure the other two even had powers.

"I'm here to help!" I called out.

Despite my attempt to reassure them, the girl with the red sunbursts turned and blasted me with a ball of fire. I went blind as eyes designed for the dimness suddenly had to cope with a light that lit up the sky. I managed to pull to the side just in time and I felt the heat of the ball as it flew past me. The ball had been larger than my head.

"Hey!" I complained., letting myself drop to the ground. "We need to work together."

"You aren't one of the clones!" the girl who'd shot at me exclaimed, startled. "Sorry."

They'd paused for a moment as they turned to deal with me. I still wasn't clear what was going on, but from the sounds of their panting for breath and the sweat on the boy without a costume it looked as though they'd been running for a while.

"They're coming," the girl in the wheelchair said. "I couldn't stop them."

"We can't stay and talk," the girl who'd shot at me said. "Unless you've got some way of getting us out of here we're going to have to run."

"I don't even know where here is," I said.

"We're on the other side of the mirror," the man in the black armor said. "And there's no way back unless the clones want us back."

"What are you running from?"

"There are...things...here. You can't see them or hurt them, but they can hurt you," the girl in the wheelchair said. "I'd hoped my projection might be able to affect them, but it didn't work at all."

"Nothing works...fire, throwing cars...they are intangible and even if they weren't we can't see them," the sunburst girl said. "They never stop."

An idea occurred to me. In Sophia's shadow state I was more or less intangible; it was possible that I might be able to affect whatever it was that was affecting them, at least long enough for them to get away.

There was no guarantee of course that I would be able to affect them; it was possible that we might be on two entirely separate states of reality. However, it was the best option we had at the moment.

"I'll draw them off," I said. "You guys keep running and I'll catch up. I've got some questions."

They glanced at each other then nodded.

I turned and landed, planting my feet. The street I was facing now was completely empty, and there was no movement except for some papers on the street that were moving in the wind.

It took me a moment to realize that I hadn't felt any wind since I'd come to this place. If these creatures were intangible they had to be doing this deliberately as a way of unnerving me.

Invisible creatures were difficult to beat unless they they had to get close to attack. My best bet was to make sure that they did close in.

"Hey!" I shouted. "Why don't you try to deal with somebody your own size? Or are you afraid?"

I wished I had better insults, but I didn't know enough about the Capes who were creating these things to know what would trigger them to attack.

A moment later they were on me. I felt something impact against my chest, followed by attacks on my arms and my face. It was like what had happened with the bear construct, except I was tough enough that the attacks only stung.

If they realized they weren't affecting me much they'd simply flow by me and go after the others again, so I knew I couldn't afford to delay.

I shifted into shadow form and lashed out. The moment I struck one of them I realized that we weren't entirely on the same frequency; hitting them was like moving my fist through a thick gel. I heard a scream; my hitting them was painful for them.

However, when I was hit again, I realized that turning to shadow made me more vulnerable, not less. The first slash across my arm did more than sting. My biokinisis told me that a small cut had been created, less than what would have happened to someone without my power but still concerning.

Lashing out blindly, I managed to catch another. It squealed and spun away even as the others pressed the attack.

The cuts weren't affecting my clothes, which meant armor wouldn't have been of any use against them.

I was accumulating cuts at an alarming rate, however, at it was only a matter of time before they got me somewhere vital, like my eye.

Still, I had to give the others time to hide. I could feel that they were still moving and I had to keep going until they stopped.

It wasn't anything like my Escrima classes. I couldn't see them at all, and so I was simply flailing around wildly. I needed a weapon that had reach, something I could spin around and use to hit the ones I couldn't see.

I'd dropped the tablecloth rope harnesses somewhere along the way; I don't think they made the transition to this world with me.

Returning to my normal state I began to run in a direction perpendicular to where the others had been running, hoping to draw them away from the others. As I'd hoped, the attackers kept slashing away at me, the pain dulled since I was better defended in this state than in my shadow state.

As I ran I looked for anything I could use. I could make things intangible and throw them through walls, which meant that I could use weapons to hurt them. Weapons would extend my reach and would force them away from me.

I could have flown, but I suspected that they could not. They hadn't come after me when I was flying after all, and if they decided that I was out of their reach they might simply return to their pursuit of the others.

Having to improvise weapons was something my Escrima master emphasized. It was unlikely that I was going to find a weapons store on any random street in Boston, but I might be able to find something I could use instead.

As I turned another corner I was thankful I'd kept in shape. I was having to intentionally slow down now; I suspected that whatever it was that was following me was getting winded faster than I was.

I grinned as I saw a large box store a half a block away surrounded by a large parking lot. A Home Depot would have everything I needed and I might be able to make them think that I was trying to hide.

Diving through a wall, I found myself in a place that was almost pitch black even with my enhanced vision. I was going to have to get some kind of flashlight if I was going to continue doing things like this.

A thought occurred to me, and pulled my phone out of my pocket. I opened it up and the light from the phone was enough that with my cat's eyed vision I could see around me fairly well.

I had to keep tapping the phone or it would go dim, and I saw that there were unsurprisingly no bars. I wondered if there was a way to actually use the flash on my phone as a flashlight; there might have been, but I was a newbie with my phone and had been too involved in exploring my powers to do much with my phone.

The fact that the phone felt a little like a betrayal of my mother's memory probably kept me from fully investing in it anyway. She'd died texting and driving and my father had banned them from the house for that reason.

I felt a familiar stinging and I realized that I had to keep moving before they killed me with the death of a thousand cuts.

Passing by rakes and other garden equipment I considered using them, but I suspected I would only get one opportunity and I wanted to make the best of it. I had been pretending to be injured more than I was to keep the invisible attackers satisfied. If they knew I wasn't injured any worse they'd have given up long ago.

Finally I found something that looked like it would be very useful. A fourteen foot utility tow chain. According to the package it would break at a little less than five tons, but I didn't need it for that.

I tore open the box and ran my fingers over the chain. It would be perfect.

Sensing that the others had finally stopped, I grabbed the chain and then I turned shadow and flew straight up and away from the things attacking me. There was no reason to let them know what I had planned.

I flew as quickly as I could away, turning to shadow to pass through buildings. Presumably they couldn't see through walls or hiding wouldn't do any good at all.

Stopping two blocks away from where the others were hiding, I waited for five minutes to be attacked again. When it didn't happen I continued on to where I could feel the residual traces of their fear.

They were holed up in a residential house. I turned to shadow and walked through the wall. There was one of them separated from the others and I thought it might be easier to deal with one. The others had powers and were jumpy.

I stepped out into a bathroom and I blanched as I realized why this one was alone.

The boy without the costume was standing. He jerked a little as he saw me but he barely responded. "Hey," he said as he zipped up.

My face would have been flushed red as a beat if I wasn't a biokinetic. As it was I spent a moment trying to manage my autonomic response as he tried fruitlessly to wash his hands. There wasn't any water.

He didn't realize I was a female. I'd forgotten that for a moment.

"Hey guys!" he said. "Our visitor is back."

The others were all gathered in the living room. Pictures were on the wall of an older could and their children. As I passed by a mirror in the hall I froze. I could see movement in the mirror; looking through I could see an older woman moving slowly through the hall.

"Where are we?" I asked.

The girl with the sunbursts on her costume sighed and said, "You saw the girl down in the elevator chamber, right?"

"The monster?" I asked. "I wasn't sure if it was part of her or if it was eating her."

"She's our friend. She can make clones of people that either have the same powers and a twisted personality, or twisted versions of the powers of the original."

"Do those have a normal personality then?"

"No...they are still twisted." the girl said. "The first ones she makes are tougher than the original, although they get weaker the more of them she makes."

"Did you have a falling out with her?" I asked. "Why would she turn them against you?"

"The clones she makes hate the original and want to destroy everything the original cared about," the girl said. "And I'm not sure she was in her right mind when everything went down."

"What happened?" I asked.

" We were trying to get help from Accord, a parahuman who owned the building we were in to help fix Noelle. She's trapped like that and it only gets worse as time goes on. She just keeps getting bigger and bigger...it won't be long before we can't hide her at all."

Accord...the name seemed familiar although I couldn't quite place it.

"He provided the place were in...the elevator is big enough to move trucks and it runs right up the middle of the building and he promised to try to get help to change her in return for our working for him."

I nodded attentively. Everyone looked exhausted and depressed.

"Everything was going well until the damned Endbringer Sirens rang. Noelle...she's terrified of the Simurgh, and when she heard the sirens she tried to escape. Accord has his own parahumans and when they tried to stop her from leaving, she ate them."

"What?" I asked flatly.

"The parahumans she ate still alive," the girl in the wheelchair interjected. "As long as they are inside of her their powers are neutralized and she can make clones with copies of their powers. Once they are out she can't make any more clones."

They'd been careful to emphasize the word parahumans. Did that mean that normal humans who were absorbed didn't survive? How many security guards had tried to stop the elephant sized woman who was panicking and trying to escape out onto the streets of Boston?

"She started eating more and more of the men and spitting out copies of them...I tried to stop her and she actually ate me before she could stop herself," the girl with the suns on her outfit said. "She stopped after a couple of clones and spit me out, but I can tell you...it's hell in there."

She shuddered, and while I couldn't see her face I could tell from her voice that it was an experience that no one wanted to repeat.

"So how are we here?"

"She made a lot of copies of Othello," the man in the black armor said. "The original can step into a mirror universe and let his invisible mirror image attack people in the real world. The twisted versions pull people into the mirror universe instead."

"How do we get back?" I asked.

"We don't," the boy without the costume said. "Unless you have some kind of dimension hopping power, we're here for the long haul. The Othello clones already killed the original, so we just have to hope that he didn't like us very much."

Because the more the original had liked them the more the clones would want them dead.

The house was without power or water. That meant that we were all in deep trouble; even without the invisible forces chasing us the lack of water would kill all of us in days. Even with biokinisis there was only so much I could do to make my body conserve water.

"Hey..." I asked suddenly. "Do you guys smell smoke?"

The boy without the costume started to speak, but then he was falling. Blood splattered the wall behind him.

They'd found us.


	14. Chain

I was getting better at reacting to sudden attacks. As soon as I saw the boy's body falling, I switched to shadow form and began to lash out, hoping I'd be able to distract the creatures for long enough for the others to escape.

They apparently had a lot of experience in these sort of encounters as well, because the man in the black armor touched the wall and it exploded outward, creating a huge gap that they could all escape through.

On the other side, though, were three naked women. All of them had ugly expressions on their faces, and all of them were on fire.

The girl with the sunbursts on her costume stiffened and I guessed that these were her clones.

I resolved to make sure to never be eaten by the monster woman. Having multiple people with my powers and a desire to destroy me and my family would be a nightmare.

All three women charged forward, swinging their arms. Apparently they were unable to project fire the way she did, although one of them was carrying an axe and that was on fire with no sign of damaging it.

I abandoned my attempts to fight the invisible figures and I lunged intangibly through the others, headed directly for the lead woman with the axe. I became solid as she swung the axe, grabbing it and grabbing for her throat as I did so.

It was like plunging my hands into molten lava, more pain than I'd ever experienced. The flames she was producing were well beyond my bodies limited ability to protect itself, leaving my hands blistered and burned.

She screamed as I touched her. I felt her power entering me and as I did her face began to melt away.

Part of her power was simply existing, and once I removed that she could hold herself together. The flames surrounding her body winked out and the flesh began to slough off her bones in a horrifying manner.

Everyone stopped, staring spellbound. It took her almost a minute to die and she was in pain and agony the entire time. When it was done, all that was left of her was a pile of sludge on the grass.

Before the other two could react I lashed out and grabbed them, and they too began the process of dissolving into nothingness. With their powers being the same as the first I didn't actually gain anything new. The flames I could create weren't three times as powerful and I wasn't three times as immune to flames.

"Get in the car!" I shouted, pointing to one of the cars on the curb. "I'll carry you."

They didn't bother to argue. The man in black armor touched the window, which shattered and a moment later they were all getting into the car even as I was fighting the wraiths. They were leaving the girl's wheelchair behind and carrying her, and the boy was thrown over the man in black armor's shoulder.

Smarter this time, only a couple of them engaged me while the others went after the others. The man in black armor groaned as he was apparently hit.

I abandoned my fight again and rushed toward the car. I ran my fingers over the car for ten seconds even as the others were screaming at me to hurry.

A moment later we all lurched into the air and we were away.

I could hear the sobs coming from the inside. I didn't ask who was crying as I didn't really want to know.

It took five minutes to find a spot across the city to set the car down. I knew that whoever was controlling the invisible things would have watched where we landed and would have tried to estimate where we were from that.

We wouldn't have long to plan what we were going to do, but I had a suspicion that my new powers were going to make a difference.

"What in the hell was that?" the man in the black costume asked.

They'd brought the boy that had his throat cut and had desperately tried to staunch the blood in the car but they'd been unsuccessful. I could hear sobbing from inside the vehicle.

"What?"

"You melt people's faces off?" he asked. He still had blood all over his costume from his dead friend.

I shrugged. "Apparently."

Better they think I was capable of something monstrous than that they realize my actual power. It might make them a little more cautious about attacking me in the future as well.

I tried to help them get the girl out of the car, touching her clothes and levitating her.

We were by the hospital and so it didn't take long to find another wheelchair. The others left the boy in the car. Although they were visibly upset by his death dragging him around wouldn't help the rest of them survive any better.

"We can't keep doing this," the girl in the sunburst outfit said. "They'll find us, or they'll leave us and we'll die of thirst."

"I've got an idea," I said. "Something that should buy us a little time at least."

"Yes?"

"First, who are you guys?"

"I'm Ballistic," the man in the black armor said. "This is Sundancer and the girl in the chair is Genesis."

I hesitated. I didn't want to use the Charon name the PRT had given me, not with this face, but I hadn't really decided on a name for a third identity either.

"I'm new," I said. "Haven't really decided on a name."

"I'll call you Ark then," Ballistic said promptly. He almost seemed to be waiting for me to ask, and so I sighed and obliged him.

"Why?"

"You melt faces off, kind of like the Ark of the Covenant from the Indiana Jones movies," he said.

"Fine," I said. I hadn't seen the movie even if I'd heard Dad talk about it but there wasn't time to argue.

"Have any of you seen any evidence that those things can fly?" I asked.

They looked at me and shook their heads.

"So when it comes time to face them we need you up somewhere where they can't reach," I said. "I'm the only one who can fight them and I can't do that if they are just going around me to get to you."

"We could go to the top of the parking garage and destroy the ramp that leads up to it," Genesis said. "If they can't fly then they'd have to climb up which they might not be able to do if they are intangible."

I nodded. "You should all be waiting in a vehicle up there; that way if we're wrong I'll be able to move you somewhere else and we can try something else."

Between my harness and the vehicle I'd only be able to manipulate one or two other things with Rune's power. I'd have to make it count.

We made our way up the parking garage. It was filled with cars and I wondered if the power created these objects whole cloth or if everything here was some kind of illusion. I suspected that only a limited part of the city had been duplicated and that was why there was no water or power; the water towers and power plants hadn't been duplicated and so there was no water available.

There had been water in the toilet, which meant that there was water in the pipes, but if it was all illusory it wouldn't nourish the body and might do actual harm if the body tried to integrate it.

While the others were busy using their powers to make the ramp collapse, I concentrated on healing the blisters on my hands. They were bad and I doubted that I'd be completely healed by the time the specters arrived, but at least I'd be able to hold onto things.

I tagged the vehicle they were planning to use, a pickup truck and then I went down to the level below to wait.

Fighting an invisible enemy was frustrating. I pretty much had to wait until they were attacking me, and had I been less tough it would have been the end of me. I'd read that the PRT hated Masters and Strangers most of all, probably because they were the hardest to defend against.

After all, even with a Brute as powerful as an Endbringer all you had to do was bring a lot of firepower to bear. Sooner or later something would get through. With a Master or a Stranger you might not even know you were in a fight until it was over.

Other than my ability to change my face I didn't really have any stranger abilities, something I wanted to remedy as soon as I could. Being able to sneak up on people would be invaluable in what I had to do.

Before I could reminisce I heard a shout from above me. The truck was at the edge of the hole above me, nine feet above the pile of rubble created from destroying the ramp, both so I could see it and so the Travelers could help me if there were more clones instead of just the invisible specters.

Before I could react I felt a stabbing sensation at my throat. Apparently they'd decided that if slitting my throat didn't work they'd use the point of whatever they were using to see if it worked better.

I felt stabs at my face, at my throat, at the insides of my elbows, and although none of them did any appreciable damage they hurt more than I was accustomed to. I pretended to be hurt more than I was; I'd warned the Travelers I was going to do this. As I did I grabbed for the chain I'd taken from the Home Depot. I wrapped it around my hand, and I closed my eyes for a moment.

A moment later I was on fire. Fire covered me head to toe, and as I went into my shadow state I swung the chain around me at chest height, controlled by Rune's telekinisis and lit by a mutant version of Sundancer's flames.

The chain flew through the bodies of the wraiths and they screamed as the fire that had been enough to badly burn me was enough to burn them to the core, even muted by being in a slightly different frequency of being intangible.

Six naked men appeared around me, looking stunned. I grabbed the one closest to me and pulled at his power. He began to scream and dissolve, and I swung the chain again.

The other five men were dead before they had a chance to slip into the real world.

I wondered if they had to wander around the streets of real world Boston in the nude. If so did that mean that the Endbringer sirens hadn't called the all clear yet?

"You steal powers!" Sundancer gasped from above me.

I looked up at her, my body still blazing brightly with the flames taken from her clones, and for a moment I considered leaving them behind in this place. I could bring them food and water and they'd be able to survive easily.

All I had to do was slip away and there would be nothing they could do. It would be only temporary, until I was outed in the real world. Considering what I'd done to the biokinetic kid it might already be out in the public and known.

I shook my head. I hadn't become a hero to imprison innocent people because they were inconvenient. It wasn't like these people were villains. From what they'd told me they were mercenaries, and they'd been forced into that because they needed help from their monster friend.

I sighed and floated up through the hole.

"I'm not saying that it's true," I said. "But if it is, what do you intend to do about it?"

Sundancer pulled her mask off. Underneath was a face identical to that of the clones I'd seen. She was an attractive young blonde woman with delicate features and a long neck. Instead of the fear or revulsion I'd thought I'd see, I only saw excitement.

"You can save Noelle," she said. There was a look of hope on her face, a dawning excitement at a possibility that had only been academic before.

"What?" I asked flatly.

"You steal powers...that's why the clones vanished. If you take Noelle's power she'll go back to normal. I don't even want my power. You can have it if you'll just fix Noelle!"

I landed and stepped back, precariously close to the edge of the pit.

"I can't," I said.

"Why not?" Ballistic asked aggressively, climbing out of the truck. "Noelle is a good girl...she never asked for any of this! If she'd known what was going to happen she never would have drank that vial..."

"What vial?" I asked, desperate to get the conversation away from the idea of me becoming a hideous centaur woman with literal horrifying things sticking out of me.

"We got our powers from vials we found," Sundancer admitted. "There weren't enough for all of us, and so Noelle and Oliver split a vial."

"People don't get powers from vials," I said. I hesitated. "You mean there are people who can give out powers?"

"There were instructions that came with the vials," Ballistic said. "They looked pretty professional. The powers weren't meant for us, which means somebody is handing them out."

I felt a sudden stab of pain in my head. I had a sudden vision of my being let out of my locker...of a woman in a fedora?

As soon as the memory flashed to my mind it slipped away. I shook my head. Even if it was true I had no way of finding these people or doing anything about them.

"There's no reason for you not to help us," Sundancer said, stepping down and reaching up and grabbing my hand. The fires had died down but I suspected that she wouldn't have been burned anyway.

Considering what she'd seen me do to the clones I thought it was brave of her to even allow me to touch her. She didn't know that I had to touch skin after all, and I was probably fast enough to touch her face before she could pull back.

"I can't turn these powers on and off," I said gently. I pulled my hands away from hers. "If I take them it's the same for me as it is for the original owners."

"So if you take her power..." Ballistic said.

"I'll become her," I said. "And I'm sorry, but there's no amount of money that would be worth that."

Sundancer scowled and her shoulders slumped.

"However, that doesn't mean that there might not be a combination of powers that might help her," I said. "And I would be happy to do anything that didn't have me vomiting out clones of people."

They were all quiet for a long moment.

"Have you considered Panacea?" I asked. "I was healed by her once, and I used to be nearsighted. She repaired my eyesight permanently."

"Changing the lenses in your eyes is a pretty small thing," Ballistic said. "I've never heard that Panacea could change people in a big way."

"Capes hide their real power," I said. "It's possible she is too. If people knew she could change people into whatever she wanted they'd be a lot more reluctant to let her heal them."

"Do you know that she can?" Sundancer asked.

I shook my head. "Asking her might not work either, because she probably doesn't want people to know."

"It wouldn't work anyway," Ballistic said, his voice grim. "Noelle tends to pull people into her whenever she feels threatened. You start changing things and she's likely to have a panic attack and once Panacea is inside of her, her powers wouldn't work at all."

"So you get a master, or someone able to paralyze her, or a Trump able to temporarily neutralize her powers," I said. "I don't think this is something that can be done by any one person. Even if whatever changes Panacea does are temporary, you told me it took a while for her to grow this large. Wouldn't you be better off starting from scratch?"

"We'd have to be careful," Ballistic said. "If Panacea is as dangerous as you say, I'd hate to see an evil version. She'd be worse than Bonesaw."

We were all quiet for a long moment at the thought. It felt wrong to even bring up the name of one of the Slaughterhouse Nine, as though naming them would somehow invoke them like a ghost at a childhood party.

"So are you able to get us out of here?" Ballistic asked.

I nodded. "We need a reflective surface to enter or leave this place. If I make a mirror clone here and it gets killed I'll automatically be pulled in like those guys were but otherwise I need a reflective surface."

"There wasn't a reflective surface in the room we were sent here from," Ballistic objected.

"There were shards of glass all over the room," I said. "I imagine some of the clones were stepping on them when they touched you."

"Would a truck mirror do?" Genesis asked.

I nodded.

"Everybody touch me," I said. "We're going home."

I touched the mirror, and a moment later the reddish moon around us vanished. In its place was a beautiful ordinary moon.

The truck vanished and Genesis fell to the floor with a cry. We'd moved the truck and its original was back where we'd found it. The wheelchair she'd been in on the back of the truck had vanished as well.

Apparently I couldn't create mirror images of objects and sell them.

Despite everything we were home.


	15. Lair

Releasing the energy that created the small pocket universe, I sighed with relief.

I'd have liked to have been able to create multiple pockets, but there was only enough energy to create one at a time. I had ideas for how to use the power; I'd been looking for another Stranger power and this might fit the bill.

"Your friend is probably going to end up in front of the hospital," I said. "But I'm not sure. Being in the mirror world when I erase it is risky."

I wasn't entirely sure what would happen but I had a feeling that it wouldn't be pleasant.

"We'll deal with it," Ballistic said shortly. He looked out over the edge of the parking structure. "It looks like people are getting out of the Endbringer shelters. I guess it must be over."

I nodded quietly. "I'm sorry we weren't able to save him."

"It was going to happen sooner or later," Sundancer said. "You just helped make sure it didn't happen to the rest of us."

"I meant what I said about wanting to help," I said. I hesitated. "I have a phone...it's not a personal phone and I take the batteries out so the PRT can't track me, but keep trying and I'll get back to you."

I quickly exchanged numbers with Sundancer, putting them in my phone. I wasn't able to take my phone to school for obvious reasons; if the bullies would do what they did to Mom's phone they'd do much worse to a phone.

Still, it was good to realize that I wasn't alone in all of this. The feeling that I had to hide what I was for fear I'd be ostracized had made it impossible to seek out other Capes. Maybe I didn't have to be alone.

"Um...Kr...Trickster can be a bit of a jerk, but don't let that put you off the rest of us."

I thought of offering them help to get Genesis down when I realized that Dad had to be getting out of the shelters about now. The fear that had suffused everything was fading and I wasn't sure I'd be able to track him.

"I'll see you guys later," I said.

I dropped off the side of the parking structure and as I flew I thought about where I was going to go next. The chain I'd used had vanished; it had been made of ephemeral mirror stuff that was only real in that other universe. I'd need a bigger, better chain...longer and thicker. With Rune's power I wasn't limited to conventional physics, and it would allow me to extend the striker power I'd gotten from Sundancer's clones.

My phone rang, and I picked it up. It was Dad.

"I'm good," I said. "I'll meet you at the car. Um...where was that again?"

The sooner I could pick up a thinker power the better.

* * *

Providence was completely lost.

It was going to be covered with a dome, the people inside cast away like unwanted trash. I couldn't help but feel a massive sense of guilt.

Objectively I knew I probably couldn't have made much of a difference, even enhanced by the powers of fear from an entire city the powers I'd had at the time wouldn't have been enough to stop her. The only way I might have done it was to steal the powers of the people who were down but not yet dead; and if it was discovered that I was doing that there wasn't a Cape in the world that wouldn't come after me.

Still...it might have been that I could have done something.

The attack had been less than a hundred miles from Brockton Bay, and yet the kids at school acted as though nothing had happened. I might have thought them entirely clueless if I hadn't seen the strained look to their smiles, the way that their laughter rang a little false.

Everyone was doing their best to pretend that everything was normal; doing anything else would be admitting that we'd all almost been trapped in hell. The Simurgh was the worst of the Endbringers. The others would murder you and your family, but those who survived would be able to pick up their lives and start again.

Those affected by the Simurgh though became pariahs...there was a risk that mothers would murder sons, lovers would kill each other, or worse would inspire others to kill. People in the quarantine zones could never fully trust their own families or even themselves.

Living in a quarantine zone was like the Birdcage, except it was designed for normal people, and everybody inside was innocent of any crimes. They were all convicted of the crimes they had not yet committed.

Sophia was the only one who wasn't bothering to pretend. She was angry and irritable, and for once I wasn't the only one she was taking her anger out on.

It must have killed her to not be able to take part in the fight, even though she'd have been even more useless than me. At the same time she had to be relieved, and I suspected she'd hate that feeling, seeing it as a sign of weakness.

Still, my new powers made slipping away to eat lunch easy. Slipping away into the alternate version of the girls' bathroom to eat my lunch, I just had to be sure to stay quiet if I was close to any mirrored surfaces. I could choose whether I was seen or not, and by how much while I was on the other side of the mirror. However, I could not sense fear across the dimensional divide, which meant that I had to listen for people as well was watch for them.

Being caught coming back from the mirror realm would out me as sure as anything. The last thing I wanted to do was out myself over a ham and baloney sandwich.

If I willed it I could listen in to things close to mirrors; the bad thing was that those things could hear me in turn.

When I sensed Emma's group coming through their fear of being rejected by the crowd, I slipped across the mirror into the other world.

I sat down on the floor and opened my sacked lunch as quietly as I could. For once they wouldn't have a chance to dump something noxious on it.

My chewing slowed as I heard the sound of the door opening on the other side.

The giggling and whispers of the girls would have made me anxious had I been trapped in a stall. As it was I resumed chewing as I heard them trying the stall doors one after the other.

"Are you sure she came in here?" Sophia asked.

Emma's voice sounded stressed. "Where else would she have gone? We looked everywhere else."

There was a loud cracking sound, followed by the sound of a stall door swinging open. I heard Sophia grunt, and I guessed that she had hit a stall door.

"She keeps getting away," Sophia said. Her voice sounded frustrated. "Running like a pathetic weakling."

I resisted the urge to snicker. If I'd stopped to fight her she'd have been the first one to call the Protectorate once she realized she didn't have a chance against me. She was just a normal now, and I was losing track of how many Capes I had taken already.

Part of me wanted to change my face into a twisted version of Emma's; with my new powers horrifying someone would be easy. I knew better, unfortunately.

"We have to up our game," Sophia continued. "What we've been doing hasn't been enough."

There was silence for a long moment and I felt myself getting angry. The locker hadn't been enough? They'd made my life hell and they were wanting to do more?

"What else can we possibly do?" Madison asked, sounding suddenly uncertain. She had never seemed to take quite as much pleasure in bullying me as the others, although she did enjoy all the little petty annoyances.

"If we can't find her at school, we'll just have to take it off campus."

"I don't know," Madison said. "The school is on our side here, but going to her house is just likely to get us in a lot of trouble."

"We won't even be close by," Sophia said. "I know some guys who owe me a favor. They'll follow her on the way home and they'll teach her a lesson."

"I...I don't know," Madison said. "What if she really gets hurt?"

"What if she does?" Emma finally spoke after having been silent for much of the conversation. "It won't be anything she doesn't deserve."

Sophia laughed, her laughter a short, sharp bark. Several of the other girls tittered nervously.

The fact that they were talking about arranging for me to be assaulted or worse and Madison was the only one who even had any doubts?

As the sounds of the girls leaving the bathroom vanished I forced myself to finish my sandwich. I wasn't going to let them force me to have an empty stomach again, even if my stomach was tense and angry.

I had to find a way to turn everything around on them. Even keeping my Cape and civilian life separate wasn't worth letting them continue to escalate.

Figuring out a decent plan that wouldn't get me Birdcaged was going to take some work. If I didn't have a plan, it would end up being a very bad day for all of them.

The last thing I wanted was to become the monster that I was portraying myself as.

* * *

It was a Friday afternoon and I suspected that it would take Sophia some time to arrange my assault. Just in case she was more diligent than I suspected, though, I slipped into a bathroom on the third floor while everyone else was crowding to leave the school.

After checking the stalls I touched the mirror and slipped through. I'd decided that the smart thing to do was to carry a small reflective surface that I could touch at any time, but I hadn't had time to buy one yet. Once I had it I'd be able to slip into the mirror universe any time I wanted.

As it was, I found myself slipping though an alternate version of Winslow. It was eerie walking through the halls without a single solitary soul around me, the only sound being the sounds of my feet.

I could alter the look of the place in small ways, warping it just as the clones had created a red moon, but I chose to leave Winslow as it was, in all its glory.

Deciding what to do about Sophia and whoever she was sending after me was something I didn't even want to think about right now. Sophia wasn't stupid. There would come a point where she realized that I was getting too good at evading her and the others and when she did she'd probably decide I was a parahuman.

At that point I'd have a decision to make. Sophia would have no compunctions about outing me to the Protectorate, unwritten rules or no. I had to be ready for the idea that at some point I'd have to leave dad behind.

That would mean I'd need a base. Working out of the mirror universe was the first thought that came to mind, but I suspected that I'd need it later in other parts of the city, and if I ended the universe in one part of the city anything I stored would end up just dropping to the ground.

The Boat Graveyard would be the first place they would look, too. Homeless people slept in the boats in part because they were not owned by anyone and they made fairly good shelter. I'd heard that new Capes often went there to test out their powers and the various gangs kept an eye on the place. I wouldn't be surprised if the PRT didn't have the place monitored just to be safe.

If I had to run I'd need a place with power and running water. It didn't have to be anything fancy, and with my abilities to go shadow and step through to the mirror world it didn't even have to have a working entrance. It was actually better that it didn't.

The best place would probably be one of the abandoned warehouses down by the docks. I could slip into them using the mirror universe so that I was unseen and scout out prospective lairs. If I found something I liked, I could even move furniture in through the mirror universe. No homeless person or gang spotter would have any idea that I was taking up residence.

I wouldn't even bother dad about it. It was best if he didn't know where I was staying or even if I had a place to stay since the Protectorate had thinkers who might be able to get it out of him.

If worst came to worst and the gangs found out who I was it would give me a bolt hole to take him to.

All I needed was to pick up a compact mirror and then resign myself to an evening looking for a good place to stay.

How hard could it be?

Apparently abandoned warehouse owners didn't keep paying the power companies after their businesses folded. I'd spent the last four hours breaking into twenty different warehouses, and none of them were suitable.

Some of them already had occupants. I'd stumbled across homeless people in five of them and evidence that people were camping out there in another four.

I was starting to think that I'd need to redefine my priorities a little. Maybe I didn't need running water, not when I could use the mirror universe to slip into a local business that was closed and slip across to the use the restroom there.

Showering was going to be a problem. I could probably do it at Winslow after hours, although I ran the risk then of being caught by the cleaning staff.

Electricity was another story. It got cold this time of year and while I could probably use biokinisis to make myself more resistant to cold, Dad didn't have any of those kind of protections. I could use battery powered lanterns, but I'd be pretty miserable. Being homeless wasn't anything to take lightly.

It was frustrating. There had been several warehouses that actually had showers in their bathrooms, probably for their workers. They would have been perfect for what I needed, if I'd known how to turn the water and electricity back on without alerting the authorities.

I might be able to call Sundancer; even if she didn't know how to steal power from the electric companies she might know someone who did. Even if she didn't, I could probably look it up on the internet. If it was reasonably easy I'd reconsider some of the places I'd already looked at. In the meantime I planned to look at one more place and then I was going home.

After all, I couldn't let heroing take me away from my father, not when I was just getting him back again. My mother's death had devastated him, left him a shell of a man. The day I'd lost her I'd lost him as well, but now I was seeing a new sense of hope in him.

He felt like he was really a part of all of this. He had advice and he was doing everything he could to make certain that I stayed safe. In the process I could see that he was coming back to himself. He had something to live for again and life was coming back into his eyes.

If we were going to be separated again I wanted to enjoy the time we had together, and being out every night wasn't the best way to do that.

I sighed as I slipped into the mirror universe again. I turned to shadow and stepped through the wall of the warehouse. This one wasn't what I was looking for at all. One more and I'd call it a day.

Returning to normal I walked down the road of the mirror universe. It was probably almost as deserted at this time of night in the real world as it was here. This was an industrial district and with the docks closed there probably hadn't been many workers to start with.

Brockton Bay was dying a slow death. It was obvious in the graffiti everywhere, in the huge potholes in the road that weren't ever going to be refilled, in the grass and weeds growing everywhere. The brick and mortar buildings around me were slowly crumbling away, much like the city.

Dad wanted to change that, and I wanted it for him. I just wasn't sure how to do it other than to beat up the parasites who were draining the city even faster in its death spiral.

The warehouse was at the end of the block. As I approached it I sighed. That burgeoning hope that this would be the one that I needed was pretty much gone. There was no reason for this one to be any different than the others.

It was a brick building, covered in graffiti. Most of the graffiti related to the ABB, although there were independent taggers as well.

I stepped through the wall and let my fist light up with flame. I'd never again have to stumble around in the dark again, not unless I was in a fireworks factory or trying not to be seen.

I'd explore the place first in the mirror universe, then switch over to the other one. I'd learned my lesson during some of the encounters with the homeless.

There was a shower in this one at least along with a small kitchen. If the power worked it'd be great, but if it was already infested with homeless people I'd have to give it a pass.

I let the flames on my fist die out and I switched to my cat's eyes. I'd changed my face after my first encounter with the homeless; no point in having witnesses that Taylor Hebert was nosing around the Docks.

Levitating to the ceiling, I pulled my hoodie closed. Going home to get my flying harness had been a good idea. If there were homeless chances are they wouldn't be looking up, and if they were they'd just see a flying figure in a hoodie.

Making the transition to the real world, I froze.

I wasn't alone.


	16. Judged

Bodies were lying everywhere, with blood spatters on walls and on the floor. The bodies were mostly Asian, although there were some whites lying among them.

Men were moving around with a sense of purpose. There had to be at least fifteen dead Asians on the floor at eight Caucasian corpses. The men who were still alive were all white, and they had tattoos that made their group affiliation obvious.

At least twenty members of the Empire were gathering up their dead and loading pallets of something into trucks. I couldn't be sure what it was, but I knew it had to be something valuable for them to have risked moving this far into ABB territory.

A man in armor with a ten foot spear was directing some of the workers while another with a breastplate painted black over a blood red shirt wearing a domino mask was in another part of the warehouse directing cleanup.

There was a water tank mounted on the back of a trailer that they were using to pressure wash some incriminating stains with a long hose. Presumably they were trying to remove the DNA evidence of their own members while leaving that of the Asians behind.

It looked like the second man was actually having men lay out bodies; from the condition of the bodies it appeared that the corpses were those of the merchants, all of them fresh.

"Krieg and the others are keeping Lung busy," I heard the man with the spear call out. "We need to be out in less than thirty."

They were stealing what looked like a massive amount of drugs.

After Rune's death the Empire had taken a public relations hit because of their inability to protect one of their members. They had been more aggressive lately, presumably as a way of reassuring their rank and file that they were still the strongest gang in the city.

This, though was practically a declaration of war. Pallet after pallet of drugs were being loaded onto trucks, which meant that this wasn't just a drug storehouse; this had to be a distribution hub.

There would be inevitable retaliation from Lung and the rest of the ABB. I wondered if the Empire was really ready for all the bloodshed that would result.

All of this was my fault in a way. If I hadn't gotten greedy and taken Rune the Empire might not have felt they needed to escalate like this. Every death that resulted from this was going to be the result of my own actions.

I hesitated. I hadn't brought either of my costumes because I hadn't thought I'd need them. I'd only brought the harness because of convenience and because I'd figured flying in the mirror universe would be much easier than taking a taxi or the bus and much less conspicuous.

Besides...I needed the practice and I actually liked flying.

I reached into my pocket and touched the mirror and a moment later I was back in the other universe. I shadowed through the wall and I flew as fast as I could for home. In a city two miles was a long way; I made it in less than two minutes as the crow flew and I dropped back into the world as I stepped into my bedroom.

I could hear Dad downstairs but there wasn't time to talk. I hesitated as I reached my closet...which identity was I going to take? I could be the white girl hero or the dark avenger.

In the end there was only one choice. I changed my body as I reached for my motorcycle leathers. I was planning to take the powers of both Empire capes and I didn't want that associated with my hero identity.

Besides that...given the way they treated people they deserved a little fear.

I shadowed out of my clothes, letting them drop to the floor as I went intangible, leaving only my underwear and my flying harness. I then dressed as quickly as I was able, almost falling over and cursing to myself as I wished there was a faster way to change costumes.

If I was lucky there was someone out there with a power that would make it all easier. Unfortunately I had never been particularly lucky. The two minutes it took to change into my costume seemed like they took forever. I'd been too late to join the fight against the Endbringers; I had no intention of being late for this.

By the time I returned to the warehouse six minutes had passed. I did the changing of my body as I flew and my mind raced as I tried to come up with a plan that would let me do what had to be done.

At last I came up with a plan. I was getting better at coming up with plans as I got more experience; hopefully this would continue to be the case.

The lights didn't work in the mirror universe; I'd been using cat's eyes in the various warehouses I'd been looking through, or simply using my flames in those places that were too dark even for that. The darkness was useful for anyone who wanted to use fear.

Crusader was the most dangerous of all of them. He was wearing armor with no exposed skin and he could summon intangible ghostly versions of himself that could affect others. Unlike the version I'd got from the clones he could summon multiples and they could all attack at once.

Victor could steal skills, but I doubted I had anything he'd want, unless he wanted to steal my Cape fanfic slash writing skills. He had exposed skin but once he was aware of me I doubted I could lay a hand on him.

Despite the danger Crusader represented I had to take Victor first. From what I'd heard he had stolen all sorts of martial arts skills, and it was unlikely that I'd be able to even touch him once he was aware of me. He'd be too hard to catch on his own and I wanted his power badly.

I fixed his location in my mind from my spot in the shadows of the roof of the warehouse, then I switched over into the mirror universe. I dropped like a stone and flew over to where he had been.

With one hand on the mirror I popped into the other universe, grabbed him from behind on his bare arm and popped us both into the other universe.

To the people who were watching at the time it had to look like I teleported in and out, or maybe that I'd gone invisible and taken Victor with me. People were terrified of Strangers almost as much as they were of Masters; that fear was useful not just because it would give me a mental map of where everyone was, but because people who were terrified tended to make poor decisions. Training could overcome that, but Empire thugs weren't exactly the same as trained soldiers.

He whirled around but I was already flying into the air. I had his power now and whatever skills he'd gotten from it were gone, although I suspected that he'd have a remnant of them simply from remembering what he'd done in the past.

I was already in the shadows of the roof and before he could look up I was already in the other world.

I'd been seen and the people down below were moving like a beehive. They were shouting, and Crusader had already created a half dozen ghostly duplicates of himself that were spreading out and searching the warehouse as I watched.

Switching my vision to cat's eye vision made everything almost painfully bright, even though it had been dim in the real world. I lashed out with my chains using Rune's power sending them flying out to the lights, destroying them in an explosion of sparks.

That had the effect of drawing everyone's gaze upward, but it didn't matter by that point.

I landed next to the water tank with a powerful thud and everyone suddenly froze. Touching the tank with Rune's power, my fingers ran lightly over the plastic. A moment later half the tank came away and five hundred gallons of water went spilling across the floor.

The men pulled their guns and started shooting at me even as the water streamed across the floor surrounding their feet.

I knelt and touched the suddenly shiny floor with one hand and a moment later I and everyone touching the water was pulled inexorably into the other world.

They wouldn't even have noticed the transition except that the water was suddenly gone as were the trucks and the bodies. When I created a mirror universe it copied whatever inanimate objects that were in the area; things that moved in the interim did not change, and everything in this universe was four hours behind the times since I hadn't recreated it since I'd started warehouse hunting.

Plunged into the darkness everyone was suddenly blinded while their eyes attempted to adjust to the dimness. The only light came from a skylight up above, and as there were no streetlights outside in the mirror world they had to depend on the light of the moon.

Bullets flew wildly and I could see the ghosts coming after me, headed for the place I'd just been. I wasn't sure if they were working blindly or if they could actually see in the dark but a moment later I was out of the universe and back in the other one. No one was left here, and I decided to try the other aspect to this power.

I formed an invisible extension into the other world, and as I stood in this one I could see through its eyes. This was what the clones had used to chase me and the Travelers, the thing I'd had so much trouble fighting.

It was a copy of me, and so I lashed out with my chain. This form didn't have my fire power, but I wouldn't have wanted to use that anyway. Instead the chains lashed out and one of the non-powered thugs screamed and clutched at his arm. I wasn't able to use my full strength in this form, but Rune's power still gave me full control.

I lashed out with the chain, striking people twenty feet away in all directions. I was happy to see that the ghosts couldn't see me any better than the people I was fighting, and so they rushed to the sides of the people I was attacking.

Moving my avatar, I lashed out again and again. Half the men were down; I wasn't sure whether it was from broken bones or from pain, but it didn't matter.

I felt a sudden massive pain in my chest. My avatar looked down and even though I was invisible to myself I could see a ghostly spear sticking out of the center of my chest.

An irresistible force pulled me into the other other universe. I knew I wouldn't be able to make another avatar for some time.

I shot up into the air and hovered, leaving the ghost that had stabbed me from behind on the ground.

" _YOU HAVE BEEN JUDGED_ ," I thundered in a voice that I'd engineered to be as frightening as possible. The more I could keep everyone off balance the better.

My entire body burst into flames even as I saw the ghosts rising in the air to come after me, spears pointing.

I phased out of the universe and let myself drop. I'd seen where Crusader was and I moved to a spot that should have been just beside him.

He'd moved in the short time I was out. He was already swinging his spear, but I grabbed it and yanked it out of his hands. I grabbed him by the throat and lifted him in the air, and as I did I touched the mirror in my pocket and shifted the both of us into the real world.

It would take him a moment to reform his ghosts I hoped, time enough for me to do what I had to do.

I touched his armor with Rune's power, and it exploded away from him. I stared at him with the face I had chosen, leathery skin pulled tight over my skull and I put my hand on his chest.

" _YOU HAVE ABUSED THE POWER YOU HAVE BEEN GIVEN,"_ I said. " _IT SHALL BE REMOVED."_

I felt ghostly hands grabbing at my hand over his throat even as I felt something pierce my stomach; it didn't touch my motorcycle armor at all but it had trouble getting through whatever force field or aura that made me tougher than everyone else. It only pierced a short ways into my flesh.

A moment later it vanished into nothingness. I could see the sudden realization on his face as his connection to whatever gave him his power was removed. I leaned forward and caused flames to erupt from my eyes.

" _GUILTY_!"

There was no way I'd be able to hide from this. The Empire already knew someone had killed Rune, but it was only a matter of time before the boy I'd depowered came forward. I wasn't sure why he hadn't already unless it was shame or fear.

I decided that if I was going to go public with what I was, I'd do it big. No point in skittering around in the darkness, not if I was going to be taking powers from the villains.

We both stepped into the other world and I threw the man who had been Crusader to the ground.

" _GUILTY!"_ I said.

They'd gathered together, the ten of them remaining, while the rest of them were on the floor clutching at themselves. They began firing almost immediately, but I simply went shadow. The bullets wouldn't injure me but they stung.

A moment later I was among them and they didn't stand a chance.

I pulled my flames back so that they only wreathed my head; I didn't want to burn the thugs to the bone but the fear they were producing was invigorating.

A moment later they were all down. It had all taken less than five minutes.

Knocking them all unconscious wasn't all that different. Crusader's ghosts knew what I knew, except now they looked like me. They were able to use a chokehold I'd been taught during my Escrima lessons to choke the men unconscious.

I made sure that none of them saw the ghosts. While it would soon be obvious that I was taking powers I didn't want anyone knowing that I was taking them for myself.

There was one truck that had apparently been in the warehouse before the men had been brought there. I had the ghosts load all twenty two men into the back of the truck, tying their hands behind them with zip ties and putting them all together.

Some of the men were bleeding from wounds they'd taken; some had been shot before I'd even got there and others had been lashed by my chains. Slipping back into the real world, I looked around and found a piece of paper on one of the pallets; apparently even drug dealers had to have invoices. I returned to the mirror world. On the other side of the paper I telekinetically dipped a pen in the blood of several of the men and I wrote the address of the warehouse we were in.

An application of Rune's power and the truck levitated into the air. We burst through the overhead door, which was closed in this world, and we were moving through the air.

If the PRT was going to be afraid of me anyway I might as well send them a message.

The Rig was visible from the docks and fortunately the mirror universe stretched just far enough to get part of it inside. Everything beyond that was an illusion. I'd experimented enough with this power to know.

I burst through the front door into the lobby. It was empty of course, but I quickly set the ghosts to unloading the men out into the middle of the floor. I pinned the note written in blood to Victor's armor by telekinetically crushing a penny from my pocket into the shape of a staple and driving it into his armor.

The ghosts then grabbed two potted plants from the lobby. They flashed outside and a moment later they returned with sea water, which they began to pour over the floor until the water surrounded all of the men. Some of them were beginning to wake up, which I could not allow.

I reached down and touched the floor, but as I sent them to the real world I remained behind. I felt a flash of nausea; the power wasn't meant to work that way and I felt a little dizzy. Sending people without going myself was apparently a bad idea.

The statement I was making was a dangerous one.

I was telling them that nowhere was safe. I could reach into the heart of their inner sanctum and there was nothing they could do to defend against me.

It could easily backfire; even though I'd just delivered villains to them they might try to kill me. I suspected they'd try that anyway. Even if the human management would approve, the kind of people who backed Shadow Stalker would find a convenient accident for me anyway.

Scowling, I found myself hoping that my powers weren't affecting my mentality. I'd decided that it was only the freedom of having power and not anything intrinsic to the powers, but I could very well be wrong. I would have to watch myself over the next few days to see if I felt more prejudiced against people who weren't white.

Sophia didn't count.

Now that I had these new powers I had some ideas about how to deal with the problems she was causing me. It would take some practice, but I suspected I could take care of several problems at the same time.

If I was right, the bullies wouldn't be a problem for much longer.


	17. Interlude Sophia

"We have a problem," Piggot said. "And we need solutions."

Sophia stared at the table and wondered why she was even here. They'd sidelined her ever since her powers had gone missing and hadn't let her do anything other than be poked and prodded by the scientists. There had been talk of drumming her out using the same disability rules used for people who had unhealable wounds suffered on the job.

Parahumans didn't lose their powers. They had them copied or temporarily neutralized, but losing them was unprecedented, and it was becoming more and more apparent that Sophia had completely lost hers.

Bitterness was a tough pill to swallow.

Her powers had been part of what had convinced her that she was special, better than the rest of the losers that ran around and whined about their lot in life. She'd had a purpose in life, and now that she was just one of the cattle her rage had nowhere to go.

If she ever found who had done this to her, she'd kill them, powers or no. It didn't take powers to pull the trigger of a gun, and if she had to she knew how to access some of the Tinkertech down in the restricted vault.

Everyone was gathered together in the largest conference room the PRT had; there wasn't even anyone on console duty; it had been taken over by a normal PRT agent. It was all hands on deck, and Sophia didn't know what was so important that everyone had to attend.

"At 21:00 yesterday, twenty two people appeared in the lobby. They were zip tied and one of them was mostly naked. An address was pinned to one of them, and investigation showed fifteen bodies there, along with five tons of marijuana, fifty pounds of heroin, ten thousand oxycodone pills as well as a plethora of other opiate pills."

"The men who were delivered to us were members of the Empire Eighty Eight, including Victor and Crusader. They were all beaten viciously and then choked unconscious. The warehouse where the murders happened was owned by the ABB.

Sophia sat up slowly. It sounded like one of the gangs had raided another. If they had it could be the prelude to war. The itch to get out in the middle and fight was still there, but she knew she'd never be allowed to, and without her power she'd most likely get herself killed.

She'd been trying to get Armsmaster to build her a suit of Armor like he'd made for Gallant but he was refusing. She suspected that he didn't see her as worth the effort and that burned.

"There is a war coming, and we will be addressing that later. That is not why we are here today."

A gang war would normally be the largest thing they'd deal with that didn't involve Endbringers. Sophia's stomach clenched as she wondered if the Nine or he Teeth were coming to town.

"All twenty men, including Victor and Crusader appeared without notice in the middle of our lobby. There was no warning and no one saw anything. Interrogation showed that the men were captured by an unknown cape, one wearing motorcycle leathers and carrying a chain. According to the men the cape was literally on fire and seemed to teleport all over the place."

A picture came on the screen; it looked like it had been taken from a PRT agents helmet, at least from the time stamp on it.

Standing before them, large as life was a cape in motorcycle leathers. The cape's face was skin over bone, looking almost skeletal. The cape looked almost monstrous, ugly and angry looking. The cape wasn't carrying a chain however.

"This cape attempted to join the Providence fight but was turned away because he arrived too late," Piggot said. "There were no teleporters available to take him."

"So that means he can't teleport long distances," Aegis said, "Right? Providence is less than sixty miles from Boston."

"Why is this a problem?" Clockblocker asked. "Guy takes out two of the Empire guys, saves us a lot of trouble."

"It's a problem because Crusader and Victor don't have their powers anymore," Piggot said.

Shocked silence filled the room as everyone tried to process the bombshell that had just been dropped. Sophia stood up suddenly.

 _This_ was the bastard that had taken her powers?

She was suddenly aware of everyone staring at her and she sunk down in her chair.

"He attacked a ward without giving her a chance to defend herself and then he drops more than twenty people right into the heart of our fortress. This was a message, loud and simple."

"He's saying he can get us no matter where we are," Aegis said.

"The message he sent was written in the blood of three of the men he sent us," Piggot continued. "And you've all heard about the murders of Rune and Parian. Our working theory is that those murders were done to conceal the fact that their powers had been removed."

"Why reveal himself now?"

"He thinks he's strong enough," Sophia said suddenly, sitting up. "Strong enough that he doesn't have to hide like a coward."

He couldn't look like that in his daily life or she'd have noticed when he took her powers, unless he was able to take them from a distance. Had he been watching her from the shadows, waiting to steal her ability? His face looked real, not like a mask, so unless he was a changer he had to have taken her power from somewhere she didn't see him.

"What can he do?" Aegis asked.

"He can fly and teleport. We believe that he can become invisible," Piggot said.

Video of Rune being dragged into the hospital by a figure that wasn't visible to the camera appeared.

"It is believed that he put Rune into a coma and then changed his mind and decided to finish the job," Piggot said. "Taking the brains may have been a way of trying to confuse investigators since he can apparently remove powers without killing."

Everyone was silent at the revelation. The rumors of a Cape serial killer had been going around for weeks and everyone had been concerned. Groups like the Slaughterhouse Nine existed, but they generally were out to make a big splash. This killer attacked from the shadows and then disappeared. There was no way to catch someone like that and no way to know their motivations.

They'd warned all the independent heroes they could find about the possible danger; the villains had been left to their own devices. Sophia had approved of that decision when it was made, but now she was wondering if it might have been a mistake.

"He is a brute; many of the Empire Eighty Eight members reported shooting him and bullets bouncing off. He was superhumanly strong and he teleported in and out of combat."

"Brute, Mover, Stranger and Striker," Armsmaster said.

"Jesus," Clockblocker said. For once he didn't have a joke or a funny expression on his face.

"That's not the worst," Piggot said.

The screen lit up again, and this time they saw the same figure in the distance touching the grass. He turned and floated up in the air and a moment later massive amounts of earth rose up with him.

It flew up the side of a building, blasting through windows and a moment later a massive fire was put out.

"Soil weighs three thousand pounds per cubic yard. This was at least five hundred tons worth," Piggot said. "We aren't sure whether it is terrakinisis or telekinisis, but either way it's trouble."

Someone let out a low whistle. Sophia didn't look to see who.

She felt a sudden sick sensation in the pit of her stomach. Killing this thing was going to take a little more than a pistol shot to the head. It was going to take planning and hard work, and she might need partners.

"The worst though is the powers," Piggot said. "We don't believe that he is just nullifying powers...we think he is _taking_ them. Even worse we think he is magnifying them."

She played the scene of him touching the grass again. He was faced away from the camera, crouching with one hand on the grass. Piggot zoomed in; the bare fingers were moving around in a familiar patter.

"I've seen Rune doing that," Sophia said. "It's where she got her name."

"Bullets were seen to pass through him," Piggot said with a significant look toward Sophia. She slumped down in her seat aware that everyone was looking at her. It was hard enough dealing with the revelation that someone else was going around using her power without everyone staring at her.

She resisted the urge to give them the one finger salute. She might need some of these people if she was going to get back at this...thing. That meant she was going to have to play nice.

"The flight could be a result of whatever he is using to enhance Rune's power," Piggot continued

"What about the other powers?" Battery asked. "Where did he get them?"

"He was seen in Boston, which means that he has been hunting outside of the city," Piggot said. "There is no telling where he has gotten his powers."

"What limitations does he have?" Vista asked.

For once the squirt seemed to have a decent question. Limitations in enemies meant opportunities. Sophia stared down at her fingers clasped on her lap. To most of those in the room she might have looked like she wasn't listening, but she was listening very intently.

"He seems to need to touch things and move his fingers in patterns before he can use telekinisis much like Rune did," Armsmaster said. "He can't teleport between cities. Lastly, he seems to need skin contact to take powers. He doesn't wear gloves when the costume would seem to call for it, and he tore Crusader's armor off before he took his armor."

"That's it?" Assault asked incredulously. "What about Stalker's problem with electricity?"

"His Brute abilities may or may not make those a moot issue. We'll stay vigilant. Observation will undoubtedly show other weaknesses. We don't have a lot of information to go on." Armsmaster looked constipated, but that didn't surprise Sophia at all. She'd always thought the man needed more fiber in his diet.

"A Brute that can teleport and turn invisible and fly would be a nightmare on his own," Clockblocker said. "One that can set himself on fire and beat you with flaming chains...then steal your powers? Come _on_!"

There was not an ounce of humor in the room. Their powers were precious to every one of them and the thought of having them taken away, stolen set all of them on edge. Sophia could sense an anxiety in the room that normally only an Endbringer sighting evoked.

"What ratings are we assigning?" Battery asked.

"Breaker 3, Brute 5, Striker 5, Stranger 5, Mover 7, Shaker 9, Trump 9," Armsmaster said grimly.

Capes with multiple ratings tended to be harder to deal with than their numbers suggested. More categories indicated more options, and the more options the enemy had the more of a pain in the ass they were to deal with. Lung was easy to predict, but someone like this?

"All he need is Master, tinker, blaster, thinker and changer and they'll have the whole set," Clockblocker said.

"If he has actually taken Crusader and Victor's powers he will have two of those categories," Miss Militia said. "And if he uses Victor's powers to take fighting skills he will become exponentially harder to beat."

"We have to get a lid on this before it gets even worse. Every time he takes a new power he's going to be harder to beat. Once the gangs get wind of what happened they'll all be going for him." Piggot said.

"Maybe they can do our work for us?" Assault asked, only half joking.

"More likely they'll hand him more powers on a plate," Piggot said sourly. "If you think the Empire Eighty Eight is hard to deal with, imagine trying to fight a cape with all of their powers at once."

"It'd be like fighting an Endbringer," Sophia said.

"Unlike other threats of this level, we can't even bring the Triumvirate in. Imagine this thing with the powers of Legend or Alexandria, or God help us Eidolon. It would be unstoppable. We have to stop it here and now or it will be a threat more dangerous than the Slaughterhouse Nine."

Piggot scowled. "I don't think I have to warn you not to engage him if you encounter him alone. Withdraw and call for backup. The Trump abilities alone would warrant that, but with his ability to control earth it is possible that a battle with him could do more damage to the surroundings than a fight with Lung."

"And if he gets in a fight with Lung?" Assault asked.

"It depends on whether Lung knows enough to not let himself get touched. If he doesn't...well, I doubt the fight would last very long, and fighting him will be difficult."

"What are we calling him?" Assault asked. "We can't just keep calling him "Him."

Armsmaster spoke. ""I have a private theory that he is related to Charon in some way; there are similarities in their methods of operation that are telling. However, the differences in sizes and gender are enough that we have decided to consider him a separate person, at least for the moment."

"We're naming him Vengeance," Piggot said. "We are not sure whether he was naming himself that or making some sort of hyperbolic statement but it will do for the moment."

"So when we do get backup, how are we supposed to deal with him?" Assault asked.

"Overwhelming force," Piggot said firmly. "The best tactic would be to ambush him and put him down as quickly as you can before he has time to teleport away or become invisible. Use of flash bangs and other tactics to disorient."

"Is there a kill order?" Miss Militia asked.

"Officially, no," Piggot said. "Unofficially, holding back will undoubtedly result in his getting away or even worse having a chance to get back at you."

"We can't use containment foam?" Battery asked, sounding a little shocked.

"He's got Shadow Stalker's abilities," Piggot said. She looked over at Sophia. "How well did containment foam work on you?"

"It didn't,' Sophia said, looking up. "I could shadow right out of my clothes if I wanted to; foam wasn't a problem at all."

"That being said," Piggot said, "If you do happen to capture him, we would be very interested in interrogating him about whether or not he can return powers as well as take them."

Sophia looked up, suddenly feeling hopeful. There was a chance she could get her powers back? Maybe killing the guy out of hand wasn't the best idea.

"Don't put the lives of yourselves or your teammates at risk though," Piggot said firmly. "If it's him or you, then it's you."

Sophia felt her lips tightening. Piggot was telling them that she'd rather kill this piece of...than even try to get Sophia's powers back. While she could understand the sentiment it couldn't help but burn.

None of them had ever liked her anyway. Armsmaster didn't care about anything outside of his lab, Miss Militia was a hard ass who didn't approve of Sophia at all. Even Assault and Battery had gone out of their way to ignore her.

The less said about her teammates the better. Vista kept making puppy dog eyes at a guy who would go on a registration list as a predator if he reciprocated, and not the good kind of predator. Gallant kept banging the flying bitch and he kept looking at her funny when he thought she wasn't looking.

Screw him.

Screw all of them. Looking around Sophia saw that all of them were much more likely to put a bullet right in the head of this Cape than give her a chance to get her powers back. None of them were thinking about her at all.

All they were worried about was that next time it might be them.

She'd seen the looks all of them had been giving her over the past few weeks, a combination of pity and guilt. Seeing it burned like acid; Sophia had never wanted to be pitied. All she'd wanted was to be left alone to do her work, but now even that was denied to her.

All that was left was school, and even that had lost its pleasure.

Taylor Hebert had become increasingly elusive, to the point that Sophia was becoming convinced that she was a Cape. She didn't go from being a clueless clumsy nobody to a master of stealth and escape overnight.

The most likely candidate was that new cape who dressed in white, the Brute they were calling Gamble, apparently because she'd wanted to be called Blackjack and it was taken.

She hadn't revealed her full plan to the others. She was going to have four boys she knew from the ABB assault Hebert; all of them owed her for not beating them to a pulp. She would have tried someone else, but the Empire wouldn't have anything to do with her because of her skin color and the Merchant kids were too unreliable. She didn't have enough on any independents to get them to commit a possible felony.

She planned to follow them and video the attack. If Hebert beat them into a pulp or transformed or something she'd have her proof. If she was beaten up and wasn't a cape, Sophia planned to have someone post it online with the attackers faces blurred out.

Internet audiences were idiots. It would be easy to make up a story that made it sound like she deserved to be beaten. With a little luck she might even get death threats.

If she pulled out a gun and shot them, Sophia would use that too. Getting Hebert thrown in prison would be the ultimate put down. Wimps like Hebert wouldn't do at all well in prison. She'd be someone's bitch in no time.

Sophia couldn't help but look forward to Monday.


	18. Checkmate

They weren't subtle at all.

All day I saw girls looking at me and turning away and whispering. I'd seen this before, on the day of the locker but I hadn't known what it meant then.

Every one of them knew what was going to happen to me, but none of them were planning to do anything about it. A large proportion of them even approved. They'd told themselves that I deserved it, that I was being put in my place.

I'd deleted all social media a long time ago. I hadn't even looked at my e-mail account because of all the vicious notes I received, and not just from the three or their immediate followers. There was a sort of bandwagon effect; when you were down everyone decided to jump in and start kicking.

It worried me that the thought of going Carrie on everyone was getting more attractive by the day. Seeing people like this made me wonder why I wanted to be a hero in the first place. Who was I trying to save? People who wouldn't give me a drop of water if I was dying of thirst?

Actively reminding myself that there were good people, and that these people were the way they were because the bullies were allowed to take over was getting harder day by day.

Fortunately, I had a plan.

Stalking Sophia through the mirror world hadn't been particularly hard, although she'd almost caught me a couple of times. It was surprising just how many reflective surfaces existed; window panes, puddles in water, car mirrors...I could see through anything that wasn't actually alive.

I'd had a little practice in tailing people when I'd followed the drug dealers to their distribution centers.

The thought of draining Sophia dry of all her skills was tempting for multiple reasons. In a way it would be an even bigger insult than taking her powers, because he powers had been granted to her but she'd earned her fighting skills and stealth skills. Those were the result of years of hard work, and taking them from her would seem like the perfect recompense for what she'd put me through.

However, the moment I did that the PRT would be all over the school. She'd lost her powers during the day and these days she was spending much of her time at the PRT. The only logical place for her to have lost her powers would be at school, especially because Victor's powers required extended contact before skill losses were permanent.

Still, another part of me wanted to dress up in my motorcycle leathers, kidnap her and drain her dry on the way home from school. However, the PRT thinkers might decide that my alter ego had a personal grudge against her, and it would certainly undermine my eventual claim that taking her powers was an accident.

I needed that plausible deniability because there was every chance that I might be caught. I was powerful, but all I had to meet was someone like Valefor, Canary or Heartbreaker and I'd be done. I wasn't even sure if powers existed that countered those. There was a reason Masters were the most feared of all Capes.

No, I was better to confine my usage of Victor's powers to publicly acknowledged villains. I hadn't gained any skills yet, but that was going to change sooner than later. It was a particularly egregious violation, so I planned to only use it on the worst of the worst. No reason to take the computer skills of someone who had just been forced into a gang.

I wondered if my ethics were bending further and further as I gained more powers. There would have been a time where I would have been horrified at the idea of stealing ten dollars from anyone, much less powers that were the center of their lives or skills they'd devoted thousands of hours to acquiring.

It was easy to make excuses, to rationalize the hunger, however. Still, I had to have at least some standards. The thing that made people villains was that they took from others no matter the consequences.

A couple of thousand dollars had bought me a number of spy cameras. I wasn't foolish enough to think that one would be enough to do what I needed, so I'd placed as many as I could think of all over the school on Sunday night.

One was in my locker, looking through the slats. I never used my locker anymore, but outside of it was one of their favorite places to accost me. I think Emma wanted to use that as psychological intimidation.

Another I put under my usual desks in most of my classes. Winslow janitors never cleaned the gum from under the chairs and so I assumed that no one would notice the bugs.

I'd bugged Principal Blackwell's office as well. If she was actively colluding with Sophia I wanted proof.

I had a vague suspicion that at least some of what I was doing was illegal, but at this point I didn't particularly care. No normal prison could hold me, and I doubted that even most Cape prisons outside of the Birdcage could stop me.

I'd have to gather the information each night, and I'd have to wait until I got some serious computer skills before I could compile it into something damning, but eventually I'd have everything I needed.

Unfortunately I wouldn't know what was on the tapes until the end of the day, and today I was getting ready to leave school. The significant glances between my female classmates were growing in frequency. I could even see some of the girl's smirking.

Hopefully I'd be able to disappoint them and help myself at the same time.

For once I didn't slip into the mirror universe to leave school. I left through the front entrance. I saw girls glancing up at me and texting, undoubtedly to let the boys who were planning my assault to know where I was.

Again, the urge to simply set myself on fire and run among them was strong, but I ignored them. I had other plans for the evening.

I got on the bus to head home, and I watched out the corner of my eye as four of my Asian classmates stepped onto the bus and headed for the back. They were all large and thuggish looking, and they all had gang tattoos.

I'd planned my route out meticulously yesterday; this would only work if it went down when and where I wanted it to. If they tried to attack me before that I'd have to improvise.

Stepping off the bus, I kept one eye behind me. The boys stepped off the bus casually, carefully not looking at me, but they began walking in the same direction I was.

They obviously weren't professionals. I'd seen Sophia walking the route she planned for me to take, followed her, and she was stealthy even without her powers. It would have been difficult to follow her even without her powers.

As it was, they were getting closer. The casual attitude they'd been exhibiting was suddenly gone. Sophia had planned for me to be assaulted near here, and they were planning to take me there.

I was going to give them what they wanted, but I wasn't going to make it easy.

Stiffening, I looked back and pretended to be shocked that someone was following me. My acting skills weren't particularly good, but I hoped that from this distance they wouldn't know the difference.

My footsteps sped up and I kept looking behind myself. They bought it. They were suddenly running, and I was glad that I had been running every morning, even if it hadn't been for that long. I'd been working on my body in the meantime as well, working on being able to absorb fatigue poisons more efficiently.

I'd increased the efficiency with which my body absorbed oxygen as well. I'd been observing the changes my body was making as I exercised and I tried to make all of those more efficient. It was a cheat, but the last thing I needed in the middle of a fight was to fall over from exhaustion or soreness.

However, I couldn't let them know just how much endurance I had. I slowed down as I neared a warehouse. I'd heard Sophia giving the boys the address. This was where she wanted me to be attacked.

I'd even seen her setting up cameras, something I planned to use to my own advantage.

At the top of my lungs I screamed for help. There wasn't anyone around, not at this hour, and a moment later I felt someone grab me from behind. They put their hand over my mouth and I bit it viciously, although I was careful not to use superhuman strength.

I pretended to struggle as they dragged me into the darkness of the warehouse.

"Why are you doing this?" I screamed the moment I was shoved forward to fall onto the ground.

"Bitches like you need to learn their place," the oldest of them said. He was a senior and rumor had it that it wasn't long before he was going to leave school to join the ABB full time.

If it hadn't been for my Escrima lessons I might have had trouble judging just how much strength to use while struggling with them. I'd been paying particular attention lately, however, and I knew exactly how hard to punch out and struggle.

Unfortunately that wasn't very hard.

Fortunately there were other options.

I reached into my pocket and I had a small canister of pepper spray; I sprayed the one in the lead directly in the eyes and he screamed. The canister was supposedly good for twenty five quick bursts or ten one second burst, but I doubted the others would let me use all of them.

They didn't. They rushed me, ripping the keychain out of my hand with a force that could have possibly broken my fingers if they hadn't been parahumanly tough.

A foot went behind my ankle and they slammed me to the floor. They began punching me and kicking at me, the three of them. The fourth was still screaming and clawing at his eyes.

I was screaming the entire time. It's what I would have been doing if I hadn't had powers. I made sure to get some punches in, hitting each boy hard enough in the face to leave marks. I clawed and scratched.

I caught a glimpse of Sophia hiding up in the rafters. She was watching with a strange sort of intensity.

It was time.

I'd slipped out of class an hour ago, claiming I wasn't feeling well. Slipping out of the bathroom into the mirror world, I'd come here and I'd used a little known aspect of Crusader's powers.

The ghosts he created looked exactly like he did the moment he created them.

They followed his general orders but they weren't under his control minute to minute. They had autonomy. I hoped my ghost remembered what it was here to do.

A chain came out of nowhere, wrapping around the neck of the thug who was attacking me and dragging him away. Crusader's ghosts had duplicated his spear, my ghosts duplicated my chain. Of course, I'd only created one ghost. Any more and people would realize that it was simply a duplicate.

Seeing Taylor Hebert and the motorcycle leather clad Cape in the same place on video would do a lot to reinforce the idea that I wasn't him.

Furthermore, it would explain why I wasn't hurt any worse than I was. I'd practiced making bruises rise up on my skin and swelling, and when the police came I'd have a lot for them to photograph.

The boys holding me down froze, even as the boy with the chain around his neck choked and gagged. The ghost threw him against the wall with a crack, and I thought I could hear a bone snap.

I had to admit from this angle on the floor he looked impressive. His head was on fire, even though the ghost couldn't really replicate that part of my power, and standing six feet tall he looked even taller from here.

They scrambled to their feet and I felt something wet. I cursed as I realized that one of the boys was voiding his bladder.

I could feel all of their fears now, even Sophia's. They were terrified, and that was exactly where I wanted them to be.

The chains lashed out again, and the ghost pulled the feet out from the second boy. He fell forward, smashing his face into the ground. He was then dragged kicking and screaming toward the ghost.

The oldest boy hadn't been attacked yet. He looked up with eyes that were red and tears running down his face, and he pulled out a switchblade. He was braver than the others as he lunged toward the ghost.

The ghost caught him by the throat and lifted him off his feet. The boy stabbed at him, but there was nothing there for his knife to gain purchase on.

The boy dropped his knife and clawed at his throat even as the ghost sent the second boy flying off into the darkness.

The last boy, the one who was unfortunately incontinent took that opportunity to run for the door. As he opened it though another figure appeared in the room.

I was glad that the warehouse was so dim. While the translucent nature of the black ghost wouldn't be questioned given his ability to take Sophia's power, the other one wasn't something I wanted to be recognized.

I'd changed costumes twice while I was here. The ghost that was dressed in my white costume lunged forward and the cowardly boy jumped back.

My female ghost flew into my male ghost and the male ghost let the boys go flying.

I could hear Sophia frantically calling the PRT and I almost felt like clapping. It couldn't be going any better.

Two of the boys weren't getting up, but the other three scrambled for the door.

I'd choreographed the fight between the two ghosts extensively the last time I'd created them so they'd know what to do.

Let the battle end too soon, and Sophia would have time to clean up the cameras. Let it end too late and the PRT would arrive.

As they slammed into the wall of the warehouse I narrowed my eyes and made the entire wall boom with the impact. I'd prepared the wall beforehand with Rune's power, even though maintaining it for an hour from that distance had been draining.

I quickly set about creating the bruises and swelling I'd planned. It was important that I look like I'd really been beaten to within an inch of my life.

The moment I heard the sound of Armsmaster's motorcycle I had the motorcycle cape grab the other one and then I dismissed them both. They both vanished.

My only worry about the performance was the lack of sound. I was hoping they'd attribute it to his power rather than to the whole thing not being real. I knew the cameras weren't recording sound; I'd checked an hour ago. My guess was that Sophia hadn't wanted any audio recordings that might have incriminated her or Emma. My only worry was that Sophia might notice the lack of sound.

I closed my eyes as I heard the door slam open. Armsmaster stood in the door and behind him was Velocity and Miss Milita. The response time was phenomenal, but the Rig was visible from the Docks and we weren't that far from them.

Beating Armsmaster's lie detector would be difficult, but hopefully I'd appear too hysterical to question until someone else was asking the questions.

I'd need to steal the powers of an actor next, maybe someone who was corrupt.

As I lay on the ground listening for the Capes, who were spreading out and ignoring me, I suddenly had a flash of inspiration. The idea of breaking into prisons that I'd had before was actually not that bad. I could research normal people with exceptional skills, preferably murderers who were in for life anyway.

It would take a lot of research to find the men I wanted to target, but with my mirror universe abilities I'd be able to appear right inside of their cells late at night when everyone was asleep. I'd have all the time I needed to steal their skills and they might never even know they were gone if they never got out.

"Can you tell me how you are hurt?" Miss Militia asked.

"Sophia Hess, Emma Barnes and Madison Clements talked four of my classmates into beating me," I said. "And then some ghostly looking motorcycle guy showed up and did the same to them."

Even though I couldn't see her mouth through her scarf, I could see her entire body go rigid at the mention of Sophia's name.

"What makes you think these girls set this up?" she asked.

"They've been bullying me for the past year and a half; I was hospitalized once already. I've got e-mails they've sent me and a journal of all the things they've been doing to me."

"That would seem to be a matter for the school to take care of," Miss Militia said uncomfortably.

"The schools been covering for them," I said. "I don't know why."

"Even if they have been...abusing you all this time, what makes you think they've set up this particular incident."

"Well," I said. "Sophia is over there in the corner filming the whole thing."

I pointed at her direction hidden in the corner and she had a deer in the headlights look. I had a feeling that she was regretting her urge to be on the scene as I was humiliated.

Checkmate.


	19. Interrogation

"I've been trying to tell anybody for a year and a half," I said. "But nobody would listen."

My hands were shaking and I grabbed one with the other. I'd been studying my body's responses after fights, mostly to try to find ways to make things more efficient. I'd been increasing my body's adrenaline production during the fight which was increasing my heart rate and blood pressure.

I felt cool and clammy; the fight or flight response that I was emulating reduced blood flow to the skin to provide more blood to more vital organs. I'd dilated my pupils, hopefully not enough to make them think I was taking drugs, but enough to be obvious.

My acting was poor, but I could compensate some with genuine physical reactions.

Miss Militia looked distracted. I'd been hoping she would be. The thought that my alter ego might be coming back was probably enough that she wasn't giving full attention to what I was saying. I couldn't get lax because she had an excellent memory though.

I'd read up on victim responses the night before. A lot of cops who were new to the job thought that rape victims and victims of assault who were calm were lying. More experienced police knew that it was a normal response to trauma.

"Are you injured?" she asked.

Were I actually an assault victim I might not even know. The endorphins the body produced often blocked pain. There were even cases of men who didn't even realize they were shot until afterwards.

I'd made sure my eyes were visibly swelling, and I'd split my own lip with my power. I was sure I'd looked like hell; I'd practiced the changes in the mirror the night before.

Dad was going to freak. I hadn't told him what I planned so that his reactions could be genuine. Of course, he'd know that I shouldn't have been hurt by a few thugs and he'd have been a little confused, but hopefully he'd keep up the charade long enough.

I winced as I forced myself to sit up. It had been interesting to discover that I could create actual pain in myself. It wasn't something I planned to do very much of, but this was an exception. I'd also considered using it if part of my brain was free of a Master's control. I wasn't sure whether a massive amount of pain would free me but I was willing to try.

"I can walk," I said. "I don't think anything's broken."

It was only a matter of time before Armsmaster came after me with his visor. My best defense against that was to never actually lie. As long as I focused on the assault itself and not on the Capes fighting around me they wouldn't think to ask the right questions.

Having Miss Militia as my interrogator was a stroke of luck; she was probably the most likely to be sympathetic to my cause. She'd been a child soldier and had been known to be an advocate to protect children.

"Can you tell me where on your body you were hit?" she asked.

"Everywhere?" I said.

It was true. In the confusion of the fight I hadn't kept track of where exactly I'd been hit and punched and kicked. I'd prepared bruises all over my body, but there was a chance they might not match up to where the camera said I was hit.

I was hoping that they'd be so focused on my caped identity that they wouldn't pay attention to small details like that. Most likely they wouldn't unless they'd already concluded that something was off about my story and then they'd take a closer look at what was happening.

"The school covered it up, and I think Sophia has somebody on her side making sure nothing happens. In January they locked me in a locker with used tampons and pads they'd let rot for two weeks...I passed out and wasn't found for six hours."

I found myself getting actually upset as I spoke. It might have been partially the adrenaline, but I had months of anguish built up and this was the first time I'd had a chance to talk to someone who might listen.

Of course, if they covered this up like they'd covered everything else up, that would seal my opinion of them. They'd make an enemy of me, and I suspected that they wouldn't like me as an enemy.

I might even drain them all dry.

Of course, that would mean that Alexandria and Legend and Eidolon would come after me and that was a path I didn't want to take unless I absolutely had to.

"Don't get up," Miss Militia said.

I wondered if she was wondering why I was more focused on the bullying than the beating I'd just had. I had to set the record straight.

"She was going to use the video to humiliate me," I said. "Play it online and at school, use it to make my life even worse than it already was. I can take a beating; I've been taking Escrima classes for a few weeks, not that they did me much good. But what she's doing to me...what they're doing to me is eating away at me. I don't know how much more of this I can take."

"Do you feel like hurting yourself?" Miss Militia asked, leaning forward.

I looked up at her, shocked. "No! I wouldn't...Mom's gone and I'm all Dad has left. It's just...going to school is hell, every day. I think about dropping out all the time."

It was true. The thought of going vigilante full time was increasingly attractive, especially because I was tempted to put my hand on Emma's face and melt it down to the bone.

Besides...I already had enough money to start a college education, and getting more wouldn't be a problem. I'd decided that my motorcycle outfit wearing identity wouldn't take money; why would a spirit of vengeance need money?

That left my other identity, but that would be more than enough.

"What can you tell me about the Cape who saved you?"

"He had chains?" I said. "He was on fire? I was a little busy getting beaten up. There was a chick in white that showed up and fought him, then they both disappeared."

The less I said about what had happened with the ghosts the better.

I winced. "My head hurts."

"We'll get you to the hospital," Miss Militia said. "Don't get up. It's possible that there are injuries you aren't aware of yet. It won't be long."

With that the conversation was over and she looked almost relieved. My guess was that she had other things to worry about other than a simple assault case; there was my other identity and then there was the bombshell I'd told her about Sophia.

I'd made sure that most of the fight between my ghosts was out of sight of the two cameras. The less time they were seen on film the better. Hopefully that would make both their translucence and the nature of their fight less obvious.

* * *

They'd put me in the exact same hospital room I'd been in after the locker. The irony of that on top of everything else was tangible. I even had the same nurse who recognized me.

I was waiting on Dad, who'd had a call from the PRT. He'd sounded frantic on the phone; my guess was that he was worried that I'd been injured in a Cape fight and that I was just making up the rest of it for the PRT.

That would help sell it to the PRT.

I felt guilty using him like that, but I didn't see any other choice. The bullies made my life hell, and sooner or later I was going to snap if something didn't change. If this got Sophia off my back, it'd be worth it. Without Sophia Emma wouldn't have quite the power. Madison wasn't even a blip on my radar.

He'd understand. I knew it without even having to ask.

My plans weren't always the best ones, but as long as they worked I didn't care. I only hoped that the hospital bill didn't reveal that we had other sources of income. The last time had cost over ten thousand dollars; hopefully this time I'd be out in a few hours and it would only cost a couple of thousand.

I'd pay Dad back every dime fivefold.

There was a knock at the door and I sat up. Hopefully it was Dad and not Armsmaster come to tell me that they'd seen through my ruse and were coming to take me to jail. They didn't know who I was at least; if they did they'd be afraid and I'd sense them coming from blocks away.

I froze as I saw Panacea step into the room along with a doctor.

Panacea was the one person I hadn't planned for. I'd been gradually making modifications to my body, experimenting on my off time. More efficient ways of dealing with fatigue poisons, ways of subtly sharpening my senses...none of them led to parahuman abilities in and of themselves, but she'd noticed them almost immediately.

She'd know I was a parahuman too, and if she reported that to the Protectorate it was all over. Other than my two identities I'd pretended to create with my ghosts, the only other new Cape in Brockton Bay was Charon.

They'd have questions, especially about why I hadn't defended myself better.

I could feel panic beginning to claw its way up my throat, but I forced myself to calm down. I stopped the adrenaline that was flooding my system and compensated for it.

"I didn't think you did minor assault cases," I said. "Things that will heal on their own."

She looked like hell. Her sister hadn't been doing well from all reports, and this was apparently not sitting well with her either. Her hair looked unwashed and there were bags under her eyes.

I ached to grab her power and use it to heal her. It would be easy; she didn't even bother covering up her skin. I had a feeling she didn't particularly like her power anyway. She always looked so run down and put out about having to heal people.

Of course it was possible that I was just catching her on bad days. The first time she had been worried about her sister suddenly becoming a murderer and she might just be tired now.

Maybe she loved her power and was just a grumpy person. I couldn't steal powers from people just for being grumpy; if I did that I'd steal the powers of every Cape in New Jersey.

"The Protectorate asked me to make a special exception," she said. Her eyes narrowed as she looked up and saw me. "I've met you before."

More than she thought; she'd met me in my Blackjack identity...or whatever the Protectorate was calling me these days. I had to get around to naming myself.

It was hard enough naming yourself when there were tens of thousand of capes in the world. Coming up with good names that weren't taken was a chore. Coming up with names for two or three identities was even worse.

"You fixed my eyes," I said. "At the Market."

Her face darkened at the mention of the incident that had led to her sister's decline. If I ever got a power that would help with depression I resolved that I'd use it on Glory Girl. I'd been responsible for it after all.

"Do I have your permission to heal you?" she asked, holding out her hand.

I stared at her, my mind racing. What excuse could I give that wouldn't out me?

"So they can cover it up?" I asked finally. "No."

"What?" she asked flatly, looking up.

"I've had some experience with people covering up what they've done to me," I said. "What happens when I talk to the real police and my skin looks great? I don't know who they are trying to protect but this will heal a lot faster than letting them get away with it."

I fully intended to press charges on everyone involved. Even if they hadn't really hurt me if they were willing to do something like this it wouldn't be long before they went after another girl just like me. One of the boys had been carrying a knife; whether he'd intended to stab me or cut my clothes off I wasn't sure. Either way he deserved everything he got.

There had already been female PRT agents who had taken humiliating pictures. I'd had to strip down so that they'd seen the bruises I'd created on the front of my body. I'd left the back of my body reasonably free of bruising since I'd been attacked mostly face up.

"They did this after the locker too," I said. "Tried to cover it up, make it go away."

I couldn't reveal that I knew Sophia was Shadow Stalker. If I did they'd want to know how I knew, and that would draw scrutiny that I didn't need.

Someone was approaching; I could feel them with my fear sense. It wasn't the kind of fear that the PRT would have if they were coming after me; it was more a state of high anxiety.

This was either my Dad or a lawyer for the school.

As it turned out it was Dad and he was being escorted by Miss Militia. She'd been the one who'd first questioned me, and so she was the one who had to follow up.

"Taylor!" Dad said. "My God!"

I had possibly gone overboard with the injuries I'd created. I looked like hell with my eyes swollen and a cut on my lip. My whole face was bruised; the blood vessels I'd intentionally ruptured under the skin had bled a little more than I'd planned, and I hadn't chosen to correct it since it made sense.

"She's refused healing," Panacea said to Miss Militia.

"What?" Miss Militia asked. Her eyes narrowed. "Why?"

"They'll use it to cover this up," I said. I knew I sounded paranoid, but part of me even believed it. After all, nothing I'd done in the past had even started to penetrate the blue wall they'd created. Cops protected their own, even if they were Cape cops.

"There is no conspiracy," Miss Militia said. "I asked for Panacea personally. I understand that photographs have already been taken?"

I nodded sullenly. Undressing in front of multiple people would have been unbearable if it hadn't been for the purpose of getting rid of Sophia.

"The courts will base what happens on that evidence, not on what you look like after Panacea is through with you."

"And that won't be used to reduce everyone's sentences?" I asked. "No harm, no foul?"

I was actually afraid of that. It seemed like something they'd do. Sophia's lawyer would probably say I was only temporarily inconvenienced.

"That's not how the law works, Taylor," Miss Militia said. "They assaulted you, they'll pay."

"Sophia isn't on the video," I pointed out. "She'll probably try to say she was just coming in to try to save me."

"Conspiracy to commit assault is still a crime," she said. "We're going through her phone and social media just like we're going through your e-mail accounts. Your father was kind enough to give us access to your computer and to bring your journal."

They hadn't asked for permission to go through my e-mail accounts. I was glad I'd kept my more problematic web searches to my burner phones.

Suspecting that this might happen, I'd removed the money and every other incriminating thing I could find and had left them in the mirror universe under the mirror of my bed. My costumes, however were still in the mirror version of the warehouse. I hadn't had time to take them home while setting up the ghosts in the warehouse. The mirror universe I was still maintaining was large enough to cover both the warehouse and my house.

Of course, that universe didn't cover the hospital. If Miss Militia or the Protectorate came for me here I'd have a choice to make. Lose two costumes and have my money reappear in my house just as PRT agents were searching it, or be unable to disappear when I needed to.

It made me uneasy, even though I had only been able to make mirror universes for five days.

"If you go back to school looking like this, you'll just be letting them win," Miss Militia said. I could tell from looking at her that she didn't understand why I was being stubborn about this.

I froze.

If I kept insisting on not being healed she'd become suspicious that there was a reason why. The entire ruse I'd set up was predicated on the idea that they would be focused on the obvious problems. Once they became suspicious that I was a parahuman the whole thing would fall apart like a house of cards.

However, if Panacea outed me they'd know I was a parahuman. My mind raced trying to figure out an excuse I could use.

Nothing came to mind, and I had to make a decision fast.

The railing on the side of the bed was shiny. I reached out and leaned my bare leg against it even as I held out my hand for Dad to take. If Panacea outed me I'd be in the mirror universe with Dad in tow before Miss Militia could draw her gun. I'd lose the costumes at the warehouse and maybe the money at home, but better that than losing my freedom or letting Dad be used against me.

"All right," I said."Go ahead."

Panacea reached out to touch me on the wrist. A moment later she stiffened and she looked up at me with accusing eyes.


	20. Revelations

Her eyes narrowed and I felt her tense for a moment before her eyes darted back in Miss Militia's direction.

She almost visibly forced herself to relax, and a moment later I felt her power as it flowed over me like warm, gentle water. It was amazing. I could see everything she was doing, faster and more perfectly than I could.

The things she was doing in seconds would take me an hour, and I'd had to experiment to get to that point.

It made me want her power even more. Her power was like my own, but faster and better. I knew she could do far more than healing. She had to do at least as much as I could if not far far more. I'd suspected it in the past, but now I knew.

She was staring at me, and I knew that she knew I was a parahuman.

I wondered if she was just going to wait until she was out of the room to inform Miss Militia. Blurting it out in front of me was a good way to be taken hostage, and Panacea didn't seem like a stupid girl.

As she took her hand from my wrist, Miss Militia nodded.

"That looks much better," she said.

There was a beeping sound and she turned away from us for a moment, murmuring into something at the neck of her collar.

Turning back she said, "I'm wanted elsewhere. We aren't done with your case, Taylor. I promise I'll be back to check on you."

A moment later she was gone, leaving me alone with Panacea and Dad.

"Can you close the door, Mr. Hebert?" Panacea asked. "We need to have a discussion."

Dad looked at me and then at Panacea. He seemed to pick up on some of the tension in the room because he nodded. He stood up and went to the door, pulling it quietly closed.

"What's going on?" I asked.

Outing me in front of my Dad would seem like a violation of the code almost as much as outing me to the Protectorate. She had no way of knowing that I'd already told him.

"I'm sorry to say that I didn't do a good job the first time I worked on you," Panacea said. "There was the thing with my sister and there were so many people that I didn't get a good look."

What?

She leaned forward. "But I do remember enough to know that you weren't like you are now. I didn't see anything special the first time I worked on you, but there have been changes that I'm a little worried about."

She hesitated. "I don't do brains but I can see them. You haven't triggered yet, but there's a potential for it. I'd have thought something like this would have done the trick but I guess not."

What?!

"The thing is, there's a weird growth in your brain. I've only seen something like it one other time, when I looked at the body of the man my sister..."

She stopped and looked away.

"I wasn't supposed to. They thought I was too close to the case and they were afraid I'd taint the evidence or something."

"I thought every parahuman had a growth in their brain?" Dad asked.

"They do," Panacea said. "And sometimes they can be strangely shaped or in weird places. It's different for everyone and some of the Case 53's...the Capes that look inhuman, have particularly weird ones. The thing is, nobody has more than one, and this growth in your head doesn't look at all like a Corona Pollentia."

"Is it something to worry about?" Dad asked.

My having brain cancer would be the cherry on the top of his depression sundae. After everything we'd been through this would be the worst.

"I'm seeing all sorts of strange changes in her body," Panacea said. "Hormonal changes, changes to the nervous system, to the eyes and the ears and the lungs. It's not cancer or anything I've ever seen before."

"Do you think it's a disease?" Dad asked.

Panacea shook her head and looked me in the eye. "Why don't you tell us what this is all about, Taylor?"

I gaped at her. I was still processing the idea that she didn't believe I'd triggered. I knew I had; why didn't my brain show it?

"I don't know what to say..."

"The guy my sister faced didn't have a Corona Pollentia or a Gemma. There was no way he could have had the kind of powers he showed. He punched my sister through a wall! The only conclusion is that there is a bio-tinker out there who is trying to give people powers. It worked for a little while but failed at the worst time for my sister."

"And you think I, what, went to someone to try to give me powers?"

"They didn't do a very good job," Panacea said. "A whole lot of little changes that don't really amount to much. I could have..."

She hesitated.

"I need to know," she said. "Who did this? The police came to the same conclusion I did, and they've closed the case, but Vicky still has nightmares. If somebody is out there experimenting on people I have to find them and make them pay."

I looked at Dad helplessly. I wasn't sure what to do.

Panacea was looking for something that didn't exist. Nobody had given me these powers; I'd earned them through the same trial by fire everyone had. I wasn't sure why I had a second source for my powers, but I planned to keep an eye on it.

I'd been avoiding my brain for obvious reasons; it was where I lived. Make a mistake there and it was all over.

"Nobody experimented on me," I said. "I'd _know_."

My head suddenly had a surge of pain, one that I couldn't explain due to nerve impulsed or hormones or any sort of physical damage.

A sudden image of a needle being plunged into my arm came to my mind, only to fade away as fast as it came.

"Taylor?" Dad asked.

Panacea's hand was on my arm. She hadn't asked this time. She looked at me with a steady gaze.

"Have you been having headaches before?" she asked.

It was a loaded question. She meant to ask if I'd been having symptoms of a brain tumor. I hadn't; with my control over my own physiology I'd have known something was wrong a long time ago. This felt like something different.

I shook my head. "I just thought I saw something...like a needle."

She nodded excitedly, leaning forward. "You may not remember having been experimented on. There are chemicals that can be use to prevent memories from being formed, and there are Cape powers that can suppress memories. If you are trying to remember it might be causing you pain."

"That seems like a leap," Dad said. "Maybe you just put the idea in her head and she's just been through something traumatic."

Panacea frowned. "There was something weird about her wounds too, but I was so busy looking at her brain that I wasn't paying much attention."

"I can fix the things that are odd if you want me to," Panacea said.

She was talking about my alterations. I'd spent a lot of time working on them. Was it worth having to do it all again just to make her less suspicious? What if we met again?

"Are any of them dangerous?" I asked.

She shook her head.

"Then maybe we should leave them," I said. "At least for now."

"If someone has done this to you, you should go to the police," she said. "Maybe even the PRT. You've already got Miss Militia on your side."

I shook my head. "For all I know they're the ones that did this to me. There are a lot more villain Capes than hero Capes...I'd think they'd love to have a way to even out the score."

She scowled. "Why would they experiment on criminals then? That would be the opposite of what they're trying to accomplish."

"Maybe they didn't know he was a criminal," I said. "Or maybe the thing in his brain changed him."

The moment I said it I realized I'd made a mistake.

The world had never been open or accepting of people with mental disabilities. The insane had been mistreated throughout human history. But in the aftermath of what the Simurgh had done to entire cities, people had no tolerance at all for people who couldn't control themselves.

"I'm fine," I said quickly. "Really."

If I let this line of discussion continue, the girl would think I was the serial killer that was rumored to be stalking the city.

The heroes in the city knew that the killer was only stalking Parahumans, but somehow rumors had gotten out among the normals. Somehow details had gotten mixed up; they'd somehow mixed in my music box watch from my Charon days with the serial killer who was chopping off the tops of heads.

"Someone should know about this," Panacea said.

"Are you going to tell them?" I asked. I pulled my legs up to my chest. "If somebody has been doing something to me I don't want anybody to know. People have been doing things to me for a year and a half and I'm ashamed."

I'd read somewhere that the best lie was sandwiched into the truth.

Panacea looked embarrassed.

"I don't know if anybody did anything," I said. "And if they did, I don't know who they are or where or when it happened. There's nothing I can do to help your sister."

She looked indecisive.

"Don't ruin my life for something that might not even be real," I said.

She stared down at her hands for a long moment before sighing and nodding. "I'm a little concerned that whatever changes are happening in you might be slow acting and cumulative. I'd like to see you again in a couple of weeks to make sure nothing is getting any worse."

I sighed and nodded.

No more experimenting with my physiology; not until I got Panacea off my back.

It'd be worth it to keep my secret for a few more weeks. After all, I was looking forward to the aftermath of what I'd set up with Sophia.

Seeing Emma disconcerted or even ousted from her throne as queen bee of the school was going to be a real pleasure. After everything she'd put me through she deserved everything she got.

"You ready to get out of here, Kiddo?" Dad said.

I nodded. My clothes had been taken from me for evidence, but he'd brought a change of clothes from home, presumably after they'd been gone over with a fine tooth comb by PRT agents.

Panacea nodded at me and stepped out of the room along with Dad as I got dressed.

The idea that I wasn't like all the other Capes worried me. If the usual tumor that gave Capes their powers wasn't active in me then logic had it that my powers came from the other growth, no matter how mutated it might seem.

Why I had a second growth was something I didn't have an explanation for. Panacea had worked multiple Endbringer fights, which meant she'd seen the brains of hundreds of Capes at one time or another. If someone could be considered an expert in what was normal it would be her.

A nurse was waiting for me with a wheelchair. Considering that I was by definition fine after a visit by Panacea I wasn't sure why they were insisting on escorting me out, unless it was to make sure I didn't fake a fall so I could sue them to get back some of the exorbitant rates they charged.

We reached the entrance to the hospital and Dad had the car waiting.

As we pulled out of the parking lot, he said, "I hope you have an explanation for all of this."

I realized suddenly that I hadn't actually told Dad what had happened. He was probably going to be upset that I hadn't trusted him enough to include him. The fact that it had all worked out, at least so far wouldn't be enough to keep him from being angry at me.

Although his voice was calm and even I could see that his face was reddening. He had a temper, even if it was rarely directed at me. I had a feeling that he wasn't going to be willing to accept a smile and a shrug.

It was enough to make me want to go and steal Canary's power and sing him a tune to calm him down.

Was it bad that my first reaction to problems in my day to day life was to wonder whose power I could steal to make it all go away?

Was the power going to my head? If it was, what could I possibly do about it?

* * *

For the first time in a long time I felt good as I headed for Winslow. The conversation with my father hadn't been pleasant, but he'd eventually agreed that it was for the best if it got the bullies off my back.

It wasn't as though he could actually ground me. I had more money than he did, even before he had to pay all the bills.

Physically he couldn't do anything to me, not that he had ever shown any inclination towards doing anything like that. Even if he tried to lock me in my room, I could slip into another universe and I could slip through the walls.

Even if he got rid of all the mirrored surfaces I could just break the door down.

The only authority he had over me was a moral authority and I knew it. The fact that he was still willing to try meant something to me though. He was leaving depression behind and becoming my father again, and I was willing to listen to him for that even if for nothing else.

He even had some good ideas sometimes. He'd bought me a pair of mirrored earrings; it had taken me thirty minutes to get my ears to grow appropriately sized holes but it was worth. While I was wearing these I didn't have to be touching something mirrored. I'd have to figure out something similar for my other identities.

Maybe something I wore against my flesh...a stomach ring or something similar. With biokinisis I didn't even have to get a piercing; I could create my own with fleshcrafting.

As I approached the school I wondered how the day would go.

Emma was going to be investigated along with Sophia, so she had to know something was wrong by this point. I wondered if she'd even show up to school.

As I headed for the entrance to Winslow, I saw students staring at me and whispering to themselves. I didn't notice any unusual fear among them, but the glances they were giving me made me vaguely uneasy.

Had word of what had happened spread so quickly?

This wasn't exactly the triumphant return that I'd thought it would be. I'd assumed that Emma was going to go down in flames and that I would be totally vindicated, but no one was acting that way. They were acting, in fact a little like they'd acted on the day I'd been put in the locker.

I was on my guard immediately. They knew something I didn't and that was always a bad thing.

As I stepped into the hall I saw Mr. Gladley and Mrs. Knott. They looked like they had been waiting for me.

"You need to go to Principal Blackwell's office," Mrs. Knott said. For once there was no look of approval in her eyes or even sympathy. Her face was completely neutral.

Had Panacea betrayed me after all? Was the PRT waiting for me in the office?

Why take me in at school? There were thousands of innocent teenagers here, and a fight would lead to someone getting hurt, unless they didn't realize that I was anything more than what Panacea had seen.

I considered running, but if this wasn't what I thought I'd risk outing myself.

Sighing, I nodded.

I headed for the office. The secretary there had never approved of me. I'd daydreamed that she shredded my applications for Arcadia out of spite, even though I knew that it was more likely that I didn't get in because of the bullies' effect on my grades.

She pointed to the door of the Principal's office.

I reluctantly pushed the door open, and to my shock I saw Emma and Alan Barnes sitting beside Principal Blackwell. On the other side of the desk was a uniformed police officer.

On Blackwell's desk were the recording devices that I'd planted.

I felt my stomach drop.

"Close the door, Miss Hebert," Principal Blackwell said. There was an unpleasant smirk on her face.

I did, and turned around.

"Did you know that in the State of Massachusetts it is a crime to record anyone without the consent of both parties? Penalties include five years in jail and a ten thousand dollar fine."

Emma's smirk said it all. Her father was a lawyer and had undoubtedly advised her about the best way to use whatever she found to incriminate me.

I hadn't even had time to get anything really incriminating. Blackwell had undoubtedly been pressured by the PRT and she was using this as a way to hold attention off her and put it back on me.

Needing a lawyer wasn't at all what I'd expected when I came to school this morning.


	21. Lawyering

"What does any of that have to do with me?" I asked. I forced myself to appear calm even though I felt my anger growing to a slow boil.

Blackwell thought she could bully me and I'd roll over like I'd always done. Having Alan Barnes here and a police officer was a clear power play, intended to intimidate me into saying things that could be used to expel me or worse send me to jail.

"These devices were found all over the school, including one in your locker," Blackwell said. "Emma was kind enough to bring them to me."

Apparently I hadn't been as careful in hiding the cameras as I had thought. My mind raced for a moment. Then I relaxed. When I'd placed the cameras I hadn't been wearing my own face; I hadn't wanted to be caught in my own identity in the school after hours knowing that Blackwell would use it against me.

I glared at Alan Barnes for a moment, and for the first time I used Victor's power to siphon a little of his legal skills from him. It wouldn't hurt him if I just sipped from the well, although if I chose to drain him dry it would be permanent. Eye contact was enough for the power to work although touch would be even better.

The temptation to drain him dry was intense. He had to know what his daughter was doing, and his presence here made him a part of it. Losing his livelihood would keep Emma from going to college. It would force her to live the life that Dad and I had been living in the poor neighborhood.

It would probably also get me Birdcaged. My ruse with the PRT was hanging on a wire, mostly depending on them not asking any questions. The whole thing would unravel once they realized I had powers.

"The same locker that I accused Emma Barnes, Sophia Hess and Madison Clements of shoving me into along with two week old used feminine hygiene products?" I asked after a moment. "The one that I've been avoiding for the past two months because it was one of the worst moments of my life?"

The policeman looked up at that, surprised. He began to scribble notes on a pad rapidly.

"I was hospitalized for that," I said helpfully. "It should be in the record if you look it up."

"It should be easy enough to resolve," Blackwell said smoothly. "I would imagine that your fingerprints are all over the items in question."

"If Emma brought them to you her fingerprints are on them as well," I said. I frantically began using biokinisis on my fingers. I hadn't been careful when handling the cameras because I hadn't thought I needed to be. Fortunately I could change my own fingerprints given enough time and motivation. "And I think if you'll check my fingerprints you'll find that they don't match."

Turning to the police, I said, "Ms. Barnes and Ms. Blackwell are under investigation by the PRT for abetting in my assault and attempted murder yesterday. I was healed by Panacea. This is also a matter of public record, and is easily verifiable. I suspect this is an attempt to draw attention away from their own culpability."

Blackwell probably wasn't under investigation for the assault, but there were other things she would be investigated for.

My speech patterns were a little different than they normally were, probably part of Alan Barnes' skill set. Hopefully no one would notice. I sipped a little more of his legal skills, and I realized that this was almost as addicting as taking powers.

"What's more likely, that I have a secret fetish for recording my classmates, or that these two have been trying to plant evidence in an effort to cover up extortion and attempted murder? Sophia Hess used cameras to video my assault yesterday; maybe she and Emma like like to rewatch the horrible things they say about me."

"Are you suggesting that I planted a camera in my own office?" Blackwell asked incredulously. "I'm not the one who's being investigated here."

"President Nixon taped sessions in his own office," I said. "For all I know you've been blackmailing people."

She looked outraged; she opened her mouth, presumably to say I was the one who had blackmailed her before she realized that would incriminate her.

Turning to the officer, who had clearly been brought to school to lead me out into the hallways in handcuffs, I asked, "Does it seem suspicious that I'm in a room where the other side has a parent present and I haven't even been asked to have mine brought here? Without my parent present, you can't use any statements I make here to try to prosecute me anyway, which means they've brought you here trying to intimidate me into admitting to something I didn't do."

"Daddy?" Emma asked her father. She looked upset; apparently the discussion wasn't going at all like she'd envisioned.

Alan Barnes seemed uncharacteristically lost for words, probably because I'd just drained at least some of his knowledge of the law. This part of the law wasn't really his specialty anyway. He was a divorce lawyer by trade, and I suddenly realized that I knew more about the ins and outs of divorce law than I wanted to.

It was a dirty business, largely built around cheating people the client suddenly hated with a passion.

"You can see my clothes," I said to the officer. "Emma likes to taunt me about how poor my family is. I barely have the money to replace the clothes that Emma ruins with her pranks. Is it more likely that I bought all of this, or that a family with money bought this...like a lawyer's family or a school official."

Blackwell stared daggers at me.

"I wouldn't be surprised if someone even used embezzled school funds to do this," I said. Even though I didn't believe it of Blackwell, the possibility that she might be audited for all of this was worth the accusation.

After all, even villains feared the Internal Revenue Service. Unlike the PRT they weren't known for backing down. They could make someone's civilian life hell.

"So you are saying you didn't plant these cameras?" the policeman asked.

I shook my head.

Even though I wasn't a particularly good liar, there was an aspect to Victor's power that no one had ever talked about.

I'd been gently pulling at the officer's ability to sense lies throughout the conversation. I'd been afraid to do it to Miss Militia for fear that she'd detect it somehow but against a normal policeman I felt fairly confident I could get away with it. I felt suddenly much more aware of body language. Blackwell was much more tense than I'd been aware of, while Alan Barnes seemed confused.

Emma was outraged and afraid. It was obvious in the way they stood, in the little tells that people developed, tics that revealed whether they were lying or not.

The policeman's brow furrowed. Without his ability to read body language he had no idea whether I was lying or not. Part of Alan Barne's legal skills came with an increased ability to lie anyway.

When I'd bought the cameras I hadn't been using my own face; it hadn't been because I was worried about something like this. I simply hadn't wanted to explain how Taylor Hebert suddenly had this much money. I hadn't bothered changing my fingerprints, something I was now regretting.

I'd have to create unique sets of fingerprints for my other identities.

"There's not a shred of evidence that I did this," I said. "Not a witness, no physical evidence, nothing but pure speculation. Principal Blackwell has been drumming that into my head for the last year and a half every time I complained about the torture Emma Barnes and Sophia Hess and Madison Clements put me through."

I put my hands on the back of the chair and I leaned forward.

"Look, nothing I say without my father being here is admissible. Talking to me without him is a waste of your time. I'd be happy to come down to the station and give my statement and fingerprints this afternoon," I said. "I still have to go to class. Winslow is strapped enough for cash without losing the meager income they get when I show up."

Police could talk to minors all they wanted, even without their parents, but nothing they said would be admissible in court. That was the only reason that I'd been willing to talk to the officer at all instead of just calling for my father.

The other reason was that officers tended to think people who lawyered up were guilty, even if they were just trying to assert their rights. If I could convince this officer I was innocent, then the case might die before it even got off the ground.

The risk was absolutely worth the reward, and as a minor, even if it wasn't it wasn't admissible. It was a win-win for me.

"How do you know all this?" the cop asked, looking confused. I may have pulled a little more of his body language reading abilities than I'd meant to.

"My father works for the Union," I said. "And he taught me how to keep people from walking all over us."

The cop frowned for a moment, then nodded. "I suppose it would be all right if you come in later this evening to make a statement. Bring your father."

He began to gather the cameras together.

The cameras had cost me two thousand dollars that I was never going to get back. Still, it almost seemed worth it.

After all...the looks on Emma and Blackwell's faces? Those were priceless.

They'd undoubtedly thought that I'd meekly give in, like I'd always done before, or that I would yell and scream and make the policeman think I was unstable. As angry as I had been, Alan Barnes' legal skills had told me that calm and reasonable was much more likely to be believed.

I couldn't help but feel a certain vindictive pleasure in their dismay, though. After all, they'd made my life hell for a long time. I was more than happy to return the favor.

I smirked at Madison as I left the office. With a little luck my mistake would only make things worse for Emma and the others, not better.

As I left I could hear Emma loudly cursing at her father for not standing up to me in there.

I'd already been thinking of going to prisons to get my skills. I'd been thinking of going after con men and gang members, but now lawyers seemed like a good target as well. They were excellent liars.

* * *

"You're going to have to be more careful," Dad said as we left the police station.

While Alan Barne's skills had faded shortly after I'd left Blackwell's office, given my limited contact with him, I still remembered a few things I'd learned from it.

"They won't follow up," I said. "They'll get Blackwell and Emma's fingerprints and maybe Alan's and they'll let it drop. They don't have the manpower to bother with something like this."

As we slipped into the car, Dad said, "It doesn't matter. They'll keep trying things like this until they get what they want or until they go away. You can't keep making it easy for them."

"Well, except for fifteen minutes today I'm not exactly a lawyer," I said. "How was I supposed to know that it was a crime?"

"We've got the Internet for a reason," Dad said shortly. "Or maybe we can just let you vampirically drain a lawyer; it'll be poetic justice."

I grinned at him. "You're joking, but I was actually thinking about doing that."

"What?" he asked. The car swerved a little.

"I was thinking about visiting a prison late one night, maybe finding someone who isn't likely to need their skills ever again."

"What kind of skills are we talking about?" he asked suspiciously. "Convicts aren't exactly known for being rocket scientists."

"Some of them know how to fight. Some of them were crooked lawyers...con men...even crooked cops. I'm needing some kind of investigation skill to go with the ability to lie."

Dad carefully pulled the car into a parking spot a half block ahead and he stopped the car. He turned to me.

"Are you listening to yourself?" he asked. "I was all right with your taking powers from people who are using them to hurt people, but stealing skills from people?"

"How is it any different?" I asked. "If I take the fighting skills from a thug, I haven't stolen his ability to live in society. I've actually made him safer!"

"And stealing someone's law skills?"

"If they are in prison are they ever going to get to use the law again?" I asked. "If not, why do they need it?"

"I've been worried about what Panacea said," Dad said. "About what you suggested. What if that thing in your brain really is affecting you? This doesn't sound like the Taylor I know."

"That Taylor died the day Mom did," I said coldly.

I winced a moment later. I hadn't meant to be that harsh. The look on his face didn't make me feel any better.

"Emma and the others have been chipping away at that Taylor ever since then, a little more every day until there's only a skeleton left," I said. The timeline didn't match up exactly, but it didn't matter. "I've got to become a new person."

I looked down at my hands. "I've wondered if my powers are affecting me too, but I think it's just having actual power for the first time in my life. Power corrupts, you know."

"And absolute power corrupts absolutely," Dad said. "Your mom used to love talking about that."

"How powerful am I going to get?" I asked. "Because I don't think I'd be willing to just stop with the villains of Brockton Bay. It'd be too tempting to look up people with abilities I could use."

"They'll stop you," Dad said quietly.

He didn't have to say who. It didn't even matter who. Whether it was the gangs or the PRT or even the Triumvirate, I was likely to have to face all of them.

"Not if I get strong enough," I said. "Have they stopped Lung? The Nine? Nilbog? All of them have been more or less left alone because they are powerful enough that nobody wants to fight them."

"They go after the Nine!" Dad protested.

"Because the Nine keep attacking. If I'm more like Lung and leave the status quo alone, they'll leave me alone."

"I thought you said they'd kill you."

"If they think they can they will," I said. "I just have to make sure they don't think it'll work."

I'd need a lot more defensive powers to make them believe that. Many of the best ones belonged to the heroes, but I'd find good ones that would keep me safe. The good thing was that the PRT tended to Birdcage masters. Human controllers were rare enough that I really only had to worry about villains coming after me.

"You want to get dinner?" Dad asked.

"If I can pay," I said. He was going to have to pay the hospital bills from my latest shenanigans and with the increased scrutiny from the police and the PRT I couldn't exactly let him put a lot more cash in the bank.

In the past few days I'd engaged in perjury, tampering with evidence and obstruction of justice. In the past few weeks I'd been involved in assault and battery and multiple counts of involuntary manslaughter. I wondered if the Taylor I'd been before these powers had existed would have been bothered by all of it.

I certainly wasn't.

There was a certain pleasure in getting away with it, in outwitting the people who had made my life hell. It was more than just the three girls who'd bullied me all this time. It was the PRT that had covered it up and Blackwell and the entire corrupt system. It was every villain in town who'd made the other students afraid to stand up for me. It was the people who'd made the streets of my town so unsafe that even the good people had turned bad.

Maybe Vengeance wasn't such a bad cape name. It fit what my philosophy was growing to be.

"We probably shouldn't change our behaviors too much," Dad said. "After all, there are those new hospital bills."

"People think poor people are stupid," I said. "Splurging after a stressful event probably won't seem out of character, as long as it's not too exorbitant."

"Well, there's a cafe where your mother and I used to go when things were better," Dad said. "She always wanted to take you there when you were old enough."

"Let's go," I said. At his look I shrugged. "You don't have to get me any wine. Even if you did I could probably turn it into sugar in my system before it was a problem."

That was technically true, although I really didn't want to think about what I might do to my body if I was already drunk. I'd probably wake up with huge boobs looking like Victoria Dallon.

"We aren't getting you wine," he said flatly.

I nodded. It probably wasn't a good idea to give a teenage parahuman able to destroy most of a city block something that would reduce her inhibitions.

We reached the place and they seated us outside. I suspected it was our clothing. The people who were dressed more nicely were seated inside.

It didn't matter, of course. For once the weather wasn't all that cold; it was even a little pleasant. Even if it had been nippy I could have called on my internal fire, bringing to just below the surface of my skin. It would keep me warm and toasty even on a cold day.

Dad wouldn't have been as lucky, but he was wearing a jacket, one that Mom had gotten him.

As we were seated, Dad excused himself to go to the restroom back inside of the restaurant. I sat looking at the menu wondering how pastas and vegetarian dishes could possibly cost his much.

I stiffened as I heard a familiar tune. It was the tune from the Jack the Ripper watch, the one I'd used in my Charon identity. I turned and looked behind me.

There was a handsome man sitting at the table behind me. He had obviously just finished his meal. He was looking at his watch, which was a much more expensive looking version of the watch I'd bought.

He saw me looking. "Do you like it? I heard rumors about the tune and I thought it would be ironic to have one."

Why would anyone want to have a watch from a Jack the Ripper movie unless they were being intentionally intimidating?

For some reason, despite my powers I felt that this man was dangerous. Maybe it was the complete lack of fear. Most people had tiny traces of fear throughout their day to day lives, but this man was completely devoid of it. There was a coldness about his eyes that was unsettling.

"My father was a watchmaker," he continued. "I always found watches interesting. Every piece working together perfectly in synch, complexity and chaos in harmony. I like knowing how things work."

I nodded slowly. Most men would be a little worried about how it looked to be talking to a teenage girl. He wasn't worried at all. Did that mean he was a predator?

I found myself wishing Dad would come back, even though I would be objectively less safe because he'd make an easy hostage.

"Forgive my manners," he said. "My name is Gabriel. Gabriel Gray."


	22. Hunger

"I met someone recently who said I'd like it here," he said. "So far I haven't been disappointed."

"Brockton Bay?" I asked. Although the man was unsettling, it was possible that I was reading too much into the situation. After all, what were the odds that someone terrible would strike up a conversation with a young girl all alone in a restaurant.

Oh.

"People live for the moment here," he said. "It's like nobody thinks the world is going to last more than twenty years, so why not seize the day?"

"I think it's like that everywhere," I said, frowning. "What with the Endbringers."

It was rude talking about Endbringers. Most people avoided talking about them like the plague, as though even saying their name might bring them down on you. In the case of the Simurgh it might even be possible.

For most people talking about the Endbringers was like talking about Voldemort. This man didn't even flinch. It wasn't natural.

"And the Capes," he said. "Playing cops and robbers while the world crumbles all around. It's like they're actively trying not to punish the guilty."

I'd felt like that, actually, although I was wondering where he was going with it.

"People like the Slaughterhouse Nine and Nilbog out there, it makes you feel like anything you do can't compare. It almost gives you permission to indulge in anything."

Was he talking about me or himself? The sense of unease I felt in my stomach grew.

"We have to set an example," I said. "If we can't be better then why should the people around us be?"

"I've tried being better," he said. "but I have...urges...a hunger. It's like being an alcoholic. Even when you go on the wagon it's always lurking at the back of your mind, waiting for a moment of weakness. I'm sure you can sympathize."

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said.

I did, of course. I was growing increasingly convinced that this guy was a cape, and I itched to touch him and drain his power.

There would probably never be a day when I met a cape and _didn't_ have at least a mild urge to drain him.

From the look on his face though it was probably more than that.

"The thing is, they warned me about you," he said. "Warned me to avoid you. I don't particularly like taking orders so I decided to seek you out."

The sense of alarm grew into a blazing fire. Who had warned him about me. Who _knew_? What did they want with me, and why had they set this man on me? Dad had just decided on this restaurant on a whim. How had he managed to get here before us. Was he some kind of precog?

Had someone outed me to him? Who knew who I was? What had they told him?

"Who were you talking to?" I asked casually.

"Someone with an interest in both of us," he said. "Someone who wants us to kill a god. Have you ever thought about having that kind of power? Can you imagine what it might be like?"

"Nobody should have that kind of power," I said.

"One of us will," he said. "I was disappointed that you'd already gotten to one of my targets before I did. Drained her until there was nothing left."

Rune. He was talking about Rune.

I felt horror suddenly ripple down my spine. This was the man who had torn the brains from Parian and Rune, the serial killer who was out murdering parahumans.

He saw the sudden recognition on my face.

"The person I talked to seemed to think we would _inspire_ each other. I'm not so sure, but I'm willing to give it a chance. She seemed to know what to say to keep me from taking her right then and there anyway."

He took a sip of his drink and stared at me contemplatively.

"I could take you right here and right now and there wouldn't be much you could do about it," he said. "Even in front of all these people you'd be helpless. And if _you_ couldn't do anything there's nothing any of the locals could do...we're on a different level than they are."

"Why do you do it?" I asked. "Why kill people?"

"The same reason as you do what you do," he said. "The hunger...I have to _know_."

"You take powers," I said, horrified.

He shrugged modestly. "I do what I can. There's a reason that you are possibly the only person in the world who can remotely understand what it's like to be me."

"I'm not like you at all!"

"I can copy powers without killing you know," he said. "But it's bland and lifeless and I don't get the same kind of deep understanding that the craving calls for. I can use powers better than the original users do, you know, if I get a good look. Without it...well, it's like tofu when you crave a real steak. Sooner or later you'll backslide. You might as well give in."

"Somebody will stop you," I said. "I'll stop you."

I tried to reach up to grab him and drain his power but I suddenly realized I couldn't move. It felt as though I had a ten ton weight on me. Even with my augmented strength I couldn't move enough to move my fingers to use Rune's telekinisis.

He hadn't gestured or anything and he had total control.

"Not today," he said. "Maybe not ever."

He glanced around, and once he saw that no one was looking his grinned at me. His face shifted and changed seamlessly. A moment later I was looking at my own twin, wearing the same clothes I was wearing.

"If I decide to come for you, you'll never see me coming."

His face and body returned to what it was before. "Get strong as fast as you can, because I certainly intend to enjoy everything this world has to offer in the meantime."

"I'll take your power," I swore. "If it's the last thing I do."

"Pray you don't," he said. "I've had years learning how to manage my hunger. Someone like you...you'd be like a competitive eater at a buffet. You'd eat the entire world and I don't think you'd enjoy it much."

He threw some money on the table and stood up.

"It's been a while since I've been entertained, so entertain me, little thief." He smiled.

He slipped two sheets of paper onto the table in front of me. One was a drawing of me and him sitting at the tables, the name of the restaurant clearly over our heads. The outfit I was wearing was the same as the one I was wearing now.

The other made my stomach drop. Leviathan was in the middle of what was clearly the Docks, and I was facing him in my Vengeance identity. Capes were down everywhere.

He'd had these papers the entire time we'd been talking. They'd been drawn before I'd even gotten here. Was the man a precog for certain? If he was that meant that Leviathan was coming to Brockton Bay.

As he walked off he whistled a tune that I recognized. It was an old Rolling Stones song...Time is on my side.

I sat there in shock. His power didn't release me until he was already down the block and turned the corner...and he could be wearing anyone's face. There were crowds walking in the distance; I'd never be able to find him.

His telekinisis wasn't limited like Rune's was, and from the feel of it it might be even stronger. It was probably what he was using to crack open the skulls with.

Had he been warning me off or had he been challenging me to a sick game? Either way I didn't see a choice. I was going to have to get stronger, and sooner rather than later. I didn't have all the time in the world to stalk gang members and terrorize normals; I needed to get their capes before he did.

Somewhere deep down I'd felt confident that I was the strongest Cape in the Bay. If I wasn't it was only a matter of time. Sooner or later I'd surpass Alexandria and when I did I'd be able to make a difference.

Right now, though, I realized that I wasn't the biggest fish in the Bay. There was someone out there with powers like mine...maybe even better then mine in some ways. This someone didn't have the same scruples I had and worse, he knew exactly who I was and presumably where I lived.

I hadn't felt this uneasy since before the locker.

He hadn't even bothered to threaten my father. I had the impression that he didn't really see people without powers as being at all important. Even people with powers were mostly prey.

Now that I thought about it, there were things I could have done, even in the face of his telekinisis. I could have shifted into the mirror universe, or gone shadow. I could have set myself on fire and attempted to disrupt his concentration.

I hadn't done any of it because he'd intimidated me. The next time we met I had to be ready. That meant no more dithering around. I had to start collecting power and skills faster than I had been because I had a feeling that he had a considerable head start on me.

He'd already attempted to take power from a villain and a rogue. It was only a matter of time before he started going after heroes. The heroes were actually easier targets than the villains because the villains were in hiding. It would be easy for him to kill a PRT agent then slip into the Rig wearing his face. Some heroes actually slept on base; he'd be able to kill them of one by one until they realized what was happening.

The villains at least stayed hidden, which was part of what I was having so much trouble with. I didn't have any real thinker abilities other than my fear sense, and that wasn't good enough to pick out individuals.

I needed something that would let me pinpoint Capes so I could take them down. I needed a power that let me track Capes...either through scent or direct power detection. I needed investigative abilities so I could find out Capes secret identities and steal powers from them while passing them in the street. I couldn't afford to play the game of cops and robbers that everyone else was playing, not when he'd just demonstrated that he didn't care about it at all.

To fight a monster I was going to have to become a monster. The problem was going to be to convince Dad that we were going to have to speed up the schedule.

* * *

"You have to tell someone," Dad said, leaning forward.

"Tell them what?" I asked. "I'm not even sure that was his real name. It probably wasn't even his real face...there's no way he could be that good looking on his own. As for the thing about Leviathan...it's not like he put a time stamp on it. It could happen in twenty years. He might have just been taunting me."

He seemed like the kind of person who would like to taunt his enemies.

Dad looked at me oddly and I flushed. Talking about handsome enemies probably wasn't something a girl should do in front of her father.

"You know what I mean," I said. "All I've got is a telekinetic making some pretty wild claims. The fact that I believe him isn't relevant."

"They need to know that he's stealing the powers," Dad said. He looked visibly disturbed. "He's going to be coming for them, and if they don't know that a shapechanger is out there they'll be sitting ducks."

I nodded after a moment. "How will I tell them, though?"

"Call the hotline?" Dad said.

"They get a thousand crank calls a day," I said. "Why would they listen to me?"

"Make them listen," he said. He stared down at his plate. "If you don't do everything you can and they die, you'll regret it for the rest of your life."

He was talking about Mom.

We were both silent for a while. Finally I spoke up again.

"My prison idea isn't sounding so bad now, is it?"

I didn't have thousands of hours to learn to fight hand to hand or to learn how to fire weapons or lie or investigate or track or disguise myself. I needed those skills yesterday and I had the power to take them.

Reluctantly he nodded. "I'd say to go after Death row inmates, but that'd be a long drive to the nearest and I'm not sure we'd get anything useful."

A lot of death row inmates were people who were short on intelligence and the ability to delay gratification. Very few of them were the kind of specialists I'd need. I needed hackers and con-men and ex-spies. I needed martial artists and green berets...the kind of people who would be dangerous even without Cape powers.

"How are you going to find the people you need?" Dad asked. "It's not like the Internet is going to give you the number of the cell they are in or the floor plans to the prison."

"The prison won't be a problem," I said. "I just need to slip into the mirror world and I can explore all I want before I go into the real thing."

I'd be going at night to; less danger of being discovered.

"Still, it won't be as easy as just getting a list of the inmates you want," Dad said.

It was fortunate that we were the only ones using the outside tables in the cafe. If I hadn't known better I'd have thought the staff was trying to ostracize us for being poor. That didn't seem very bright in a world of easily offended Capes.

After all, I could easily come back after closing and burn their entire restaurant down...not that I would, of course. That way led to the slippery slope towards being like the man who had just left.

"I'm going to need advice," I said. "And the only people I think I can talk to are the Travelers."

"The Mercenaries you were talking about?"

I nodded. "They know what I can do and haven't judged me for it. It's not like I can ask Crystal; she'd never approve. I can't ask the Protectorate either. Stealing people's skills has to be some kind of violation of their basic human rights."

"Better than their brains," Dad muttered. "Are you sure he knew who you were?"

"He tracked us here," I said. "That means I need to get busy finding a place to stay. In a pinch we can stay in a mirror universe, but that'd mean I wouldn't be able to use it to escape if I was in other parts of the city, and besides, I think running water and electricity are a necessity."

"I have a couple of ideas about that," Dad said. "We just have to think outside the box."

There wasn't anyone on the street, and so Dad leaned forward.

"There's an old theater I used to go to as a kid. It only had two screens. It hasn't been open in twenty years. Nobody wants to buy it because there aren't enough screens and the building isn't up to modern code. With the economy the way it is nobody wants to even demolish it and put something more useful in."

"You think it'd work?" I asked doubtfully. "It doesn't sound very safe."

"The front use to be covered in glass but it's all boarded up now. There's an entrance in the back, a metal door. It's two stories."

I nodded slowly.

Warehouses were where everyone chose to squat. They'd be the first place the Protectorate chose to look if they came for me...or Gray for that matter.

"We'd have to be able to get electricity and water," I said.

"It's really easy to put a shower in," Dad said. He looked at me modestly, as though he was some sort of great handyman. He hadn't even fixed the step on our porch, and it had been there for years.

"We don't know if the water heater works," I said. "And I'll bet after twenty years the place is just crawling with bugs. I don't have a power that will get rid of scorpions or wasps."

Well, there was always fire, but it wouldn't leave much of a place to live afterward.

"The area it's in is actually fairly active," Dad said. "People coming and going all the time. Normally I'd say that'd make for a bad hideout, but..."

With my mirror power we could slip in and out without being seen. We could even drag things like a shower or a new water heater in without a problem. We might even be able to tap into the power and water of the building next door, assuming I stole the skills of an electrician or a plumber.

Were there criminal plumbers out there? I imagined a serial killer looking like Mario or Luigi braining people with a pipe wrench.

Huh. I'd actually done that. It was less unlikely than it sounded.

"We'll have to check it out," I said neutrally. "There's a lot of things that could make it uninhabitable. For all we know it's full of black mold. Even if it's great we probably want more than one bolt hole; we'll want at least two more places we can go to if everything goes south."

Before this all ended up, I'd need the skills of a mechanic and a house builder as well. Were there evil contractors?

According to Alan Barnes all contractors were evil, but I wouldn't take his word with anything less than a ton of salt.

There was so much to do and so little time that I wasn't sure what to do first. It was all a little overwhelming, even without the specter of a psychopathic serial killer with powers like my own waiting in the background.

I had a horrible feeling that the only reason he wanted me to go out and find more powers was so I made a better buffet when he finally got around to killing me. I needed to make that as hard as possible.

Randomly running around and picking up powers whenever I came across people had been good enough so far, but now I needed a more cohesive strategy.

Even without this man Gabriel I had to worry about Leviathan coming. I needed the right set of powers and I needed a place where Dad would be safe.

It all felt a little overwhelming.


	23. Fighting

"This place is a mess," I said.

I really wanted to say something much worse, but I'd never really cursed in front of Dad and I didn't intend to start now. Sneaking into the old theater through the mirror universe had been a snap since I could simply break through the front door and it wouldn't affect the real world in any way.

"If it was nice someone would have already moved in," he reminded me.

It was going to take a lot of work to clean this place up, and my ghosts didn't really affect inorganic matter. I was going to have to go the Sorcerer's apprentice route and use Rune's power on cleaning supplies, and even with that it was going to take a while.

"We don't have to clean the whole thing," he said. "In fact it's probably better if we don't. All we have to worry about is the managers office and the projectionists booth and we can leave the rest alone."

I nodded reluctantly. It wasn't exactly the clean warehouse I'd wanted, but it was in one of the higher elevation locations in Brockton Bay. If Leviathan came a lot of the city was going to be flooded and if we survived to the aftermath we'd need a place to stay. Our own house was too close to the docks to assume that it wouldn't be in bad shape. This place wouldn't be nearly as good as an Endbringer shelter, but I was mostly hoping to use it to hide from the gangs and the Protectorate.

We could even sleep in the mirror universe once the place was cleaned up. We'd just have to return to the real world to use the bathroom and to shower, assuming I found any evil plumbers to copy.

Dad had suggested targeting the terminally ill as well. They'd be easier to reach and they wouldn't be using their skills anytime soon. Of course, there was always the chance that Panacea would come by and reverse their illness so it wasn't a perfect solution.

Maybe nursing homes; as far as I knew Panacea couldn't do anything about aging.

It wouldn't be hard to take on a different face and make visits to nursing homes. Get some of the people there talking about the work they'd done and I'd have my targets. I could even steal their skills right out in the open in front of everyone and no one would even notice.

The targets might not even notice themselves. It was unlikely that they would be doing any plumbing or electrician work anytime soon and if they lost the skill they'd assume it was simply due to aging or dementia.

The skills weren't the only things I'd need. If I was facing Leviathan I'd need speed more than anything. It didn't matter if I had some kind of world ending attack if I couldn't hit him with it. Leviathan's two most dangerous powers were his speed and his control over water.

I was already planning on learning how to make myself gills. It would take a while, but the last thing I needed was for Leviathan to drown me before I got to him.

He might be able to draw all the oxygen from the water, but there wasn't anything I could do about that. Even biokinisis could only go so far. I could work on becoming even more efficient about how to use my oxygen. It'd mean that I'd have to be cautious when I saw Panacea again.

Velocity would have been an ideal candidate to give me the speed I needed, but he was a hero and I'd promised myself not to take heroes no matter how convenient their powers might be. I'd already made one teenage boy cry when I'd taken his powers; the last thing I needed was that kind of guilt again.

Cricket was going to have to be my next target. She had enhanced reflexes and some sort of echolocation, both of which would be helpful in targeting Leviathan. The problem was even managing to lay a hand on her.

"Doesn't the Empire have fighting matches?" I asked suddenly.

"Dogs or cage fights?" Dad asked. He was sweeping twenty years of dust off a countertop and coughing. "They do both I think. I've talked to dock workers who have gone to both of them. Why?"

"I'm not going to get fighting skills from old people or random thugs in prison. I'll need skills from people who are using them...preferably bad people."

"You can't just show up to a fight like that...somebody has to refer you."

I nodded. The gangs tended to keep people from infiltrating their operations by holding whoever referred them responsible for the actions of the new guy. If I was referred there was a chance I'd get a dockworker killed. Additionally, under torture the guy was likely to give up my Dad.

"I'm sure I can figure out something," I said. "As long as I can find where the fights are being held."

I hesitated. "Do you think it would be too risky to ask around?"

"If I ask and the fight gets attacked right away, probably," Dad said. "If you give it a couple of nights before you attack maybe not."

I thought for a moment. "Maybe it would be better if you just find out who's going. I know where I can buy some GPS tracking devices that I can put on their cars so I can track them there."

"Is that legal?" he asked.

"Compared to some of the other things I've done?" I asked. I shook my head. "Probably not. But they won't even know I did it and I'll get them back later...those things are a couple of hundred dollars apiece and I'll probably want to use them again."

Did Hookwolf even have a car?

"You could just hide in their trunk," Dad said.

"Those guys tend to be packrats," I said. "Maybe if I could shrink down to the size of a raccoon that might work, but maybe not."

"Fine," he said. "Let's get to work."

I touched a broom and imbued it with Rune's powers. I was reminded of an old Disney cartoon, and I vowed not to let the cleaning get out of hand. After all, it'd be ridiculous for the scourge of Brockton Bay to be felled by a little dust.

Still, twenty years of grime was going to be a daunting opponent.

* * *

The Internet was a wonderful thing. It was like the world's greatest garage sale. People offered all kinds of free furniture for anybody who was willing to cart it off.

Dad had made it a kind of family project. Even though we had money I'd stolen from the gangs it wouldn't last forever. More importantly, I suspected that it would bother Dad for us to buy a whole bunch of new things for a lair that we didn't plan to use.

His nature said that we shouldn't have better furniture in our bolthole than we had at home, and we couldn't afford to get a lot of new furniture at home in case the PRT was still watching. That was one of the red flags for drug dealing and other criminal enterprises.

I tried to argue for us to get nice things for the basement; a big screen television maybe or at least a nice couch, but he refused. Instead we drove around to a dozen different houses over a three day period.

In the end we'd replaced several of the used items in our home with items we'd gotten for free. That way if we were questioned by the PRT about why we'd been driving around town we'd have an answer for them.

The items from our house went into the back of a truck we'd borrowed from Kyle and Lacey. After what had happened at the Lord's Market I wasn't sure they'd want to spend any time with us again. We had to seem like bad luck.

I was able to slip the entire truck into the mirror world as we were going under an overpass; to an outside observer the truck would have disappeared. The overpass was just at the edge of the mirror world I could create while the movie theater was at the other.

Delivering the items into the mirror version of the theater and then dropping them into the real world meant that no one saw us bringing furniture to the place. It still didn't have water or electricity, but I had a plan for that.

Bringing the truck back to the real world under the overpass was something I did only after slipping into the real world and checking carefully for observers. No point in startling a homeless person who might go to the PRT or worse one of the gangs. The Merchants especially were known to pay the homeless for information, often in trade.

Dad made his inquiries and we learned that the next fights were going to be on Thursday.

As I lay under the truck of one of the Dockworkers, I reflected that I would have made an excellent Mafia car bomber. The most dangerous part, after all, other than accidentally blowing yourself up was being seen by people as you approached and went under the car.

I was able to slip into the mirror world, slip under the car and reappear in the real world under the real car, all without being seen. After that it was just a matter of waiting for the men to leave work and then follow them.

To my disgust and irritation they'd decided to go to a strip club for two hours before finally making their ways to the fights. I didn't know a lot about strip clubs, but slipping through to the mirror world I discovered that they had a lot of reflective surfaces, more than I would have preferred since I could see through them. I didn't bother letting the sound come through; the music was so loud I could hear it from the street.

Dad had once told me that regular clubs played music loud so that people couldn't talk instead of drink more. I supposed that went double for a club like this.

The last thing I needed was to see what I saw through the mirrors in that club; it made my complex about my own lack of assets even worse.

While I could of course make my assets more prominent, I suspected it would only prompt Emma to taunt me for stuffing my bra. If Panacea saw that I'd been making adjustments, she'd know it was me doing the changing. Vanity, after all was a feminine attribute.

I ended up hiding in the trunk after all, crushed between a spare tire and piles of fast food containers that he'd apparently been too lazy to fully get rid of. My backpack pressed uncomfortably into my side. Without my toughness powers I knew it would have been intolerable.

For the next hour and forty five minutes I focused on the inside of my body, working on creating gills. I'd already done research on gills on the Internet, but they were harder to make than you'd think The fact that I didn't have any water to check my work with. I'd have to wait until I got home with a bathtub.

I finally heard the sound of the two men talking as they approached the car. Their voices were muffled but I'd heard them before. A moment later the sounds of both doors opening was followed by a dip in the car as they got in.

The vibrations of the door slamming were followed by the engine starting up.

I quickly realized that being inside a trunk wasn't nearly as comfortable as I would have thought. Every time there was a bump in the road I found myself bouncing up only to slam into the bottom of the trunk. Every time the car turned I was thrown into the side. If I hadn't been parahumanly tough I'd have been a mass of bruises by the end of the fifteen minute ride.

As it was, I was glad when the engine finally shut off and the guys stepped out of the car. I shifted into the mirror universe, then went shadow form out of the car.

We were outside of a large warehouse and there were cars parked everywhere. In the mirror universe there were no people, but I imagined crowds of people walking toward the event.

How could they possibly keep something like this secret from the police, much less the PRT. The only thing I could think of was that the PRT chose to let these fights go.

Cricket was an ex-cage fighter who often attended these things. My best chance of getting to her was to take her powers before she knew I was there; once she was aware of me I'd never lay a hand on her. She was said to be fast enough to dodge bullets after all.

In the mirror universe I shadowed through the walls of the warehouse. Other than it's value as an escape route, the mirror universe was also great for reconnaissance. It was dark in this version of the warehouse, but catching my hand on fire and using cat's eyes took care of that.

One of the first things I looked for was reflective surfaces that would give me a look into the real world. Unlike the strip club there weren't wall length mirrors or shiny, reflective stripper poles.

There weren't a lot of reflective surfaces at all, but I could see two gashes in the air that had to be two foot long each. From their shapes I guessed that they were highly polished blades. Peering through them I could see that the room was highly crowded.

There wasn't even a ring, really, just a circle of people.

I frowned. The simplest thing would be to brush by Cricket in the crowd. Her costume showed a little skin, which meant that I'd have my opportunity.

Unfortunately I couldn't see well enough to know where everyone was or where they'd be looking.

Looking around the mirror warehouse, I realized that there was an office in the front. That would probably be the safest place for me to come from, and if there was someone there I could take them out and then slip into the other warehouse without being noticed.

I pulled out my backpack. I'd brought my Vengeance costume as well as a black hoodie. Leaving the Vengeance costume in the mirror universe, I hoped that I wouldn't need it. Changing my face now was easy, and I made my way to the back office.

There was a room with dusty office equipment. I slipped into it, and taking a deep breath I slipped into the other world.

I'd forgotten to get rid of my cat's eyes and so light exploded into my vision.

The sound of heavy breathing was coming from behind me. I whirled and then found myself blushing a deep red as I realized that the old desk was rocking, throwing up dust everywhere. Neither occupant of the desk noticed me at all. Rather than interrupt what they were doing I hurried to the door.

Slipping out of the door, I was seen by one skinhead. He smirked at me. Apparently he knew what was going on inside the room and thought I'd been a part of it. I felt an urge to smash him headfirst into the wall, but I resisted.

I was here to take the powers I'd need to save the city.

There were a hundred people in the center of the room, surrounding the fighters. They were calling out excitedly and I could hear the fleshy sounds of fists striking flesh.

My hoodie was up even though my face wasn't one anyone would recognize, and I pushed my way through the people until I was able to see what was happening.

The woman with the twin swords was watching the fights with a gimlet eye. She had a scarred face and a cage on her head. It was a stupid costume in some ways, but it at least let me know who she was.

Hookwolf was there as well. Even my laziest costume wasn't as bad as his. He wore jeans and went shirtless and his only concession to the idea of having a costume was the metal wolf mask he wore.

I couldn't see if any other Empire Eighty Eight Capes were there; the crowd was too thick. I couldn't afford to assume that they weren't however.

All I had to do was make my way around the circle and brush by the both of them. I'd be depriving the Empire of two of its heavy hitters even as I made my own chances of survival better. With luck they'd never even know what had happened until they tried to use their powers and they were gone.

The people around me cheered loudly as a body hit the floor. Money began exchanging hands and in the chaos I lost sight of Cricket and Hookwolf.

I tried to push my way past a large, sweaty skinhead who was covered in all kinds of tattoos. He glanced down at me and snarled. Irritably he shoved me back. I found myself stumbling backward into the ring.

"It looks like we have another contender!" I heard Hookwolf call out, and the crowd went wild.

They didn't care that I looked like a female. All they wanted was blood.

The man who stepped out to fight me was covered in tattoos. He was massive, almost seven feet tall, and he looked like the kind of person who wouldn't care about beating a woman.

If I fought him I'd immediately reveal my lack of fighting skill. I wasn't sure Victor's power was fast enough to take his convincingly. If I won they'd realize I was a cape.

Losing wasn't an option either; they were dragging losers off further and further away from Cricket and Hookwolf.

I was going to have to improvise.


	24. Burn

I locked eyes with the man I was supposed to fight and immediately began to draw on his fighting skills with as much force as I was able.

As far as I could tell he wasn't a parahuman. I was tough enough to take a blow from anyone who was unenhanced without problems. Given that he wasn't wearing a shirt, I wasn't worried about his being a parahuman either.

The trick was going to be to put on a good show. I needed to make it believable that I beat him without cluing everyone in that I was a parahuman. That would get me close enough to Hookwolf to do what I needed without any problem.

For someone of my size that meant I had to avoid getting hit solidly. I had my Escrima training, such as it was, but a few weeks of training couldn't match the skills of a street fighter with presumably years of experience.

My only option was to focus on dodging until I'd gathered enough fighting skill to fake it.

"Begin!" Hookwolf called out.

As the man lunged forward I tried to stumble back. I heard members of the crowd begin to boo. I kept my eyes on him, draining his skills as rapidly as I could.

Someone from behind me pushed me into the circle and the man I was facing punched me. I barely managed to turn in time for it to be a glancing blow. I made myself fall to the floor as though I'd been hurt.

I'd heard of these fights. No one was allowed to tap out; the Empire despised cowardice. MI could try to pretend to be knocked out and with biokinisis I might actually manage it. Winning this fight wasn't really my goal. All I really needed to do was get to two people and when I did it would be all over.

I forced myself to scramble to my feet. The crowd around me cheered.

Wanting to steal skills was part of the reason I'd come here, and Victor's power worked better by touch than it did by eye contact.

I lunged forward, but he was faster than me and he ducked back. He was apparently a mixed martial artist, because a leg swept out from under me and I fell to the floor again. No skin contact because I was wearing pants.

As he tried to stomp me I rolled and I grabbed his foot. Contact...I pulled fighting skill ten times as fast with contact. I yanked hard and he tripped, falling to the floor.

I was on him, one hand on his chest and the other punching away at his face. I didn't use anything like my true power, but the real shock was the drain I was doing with the hand that wasn't hitting him.

He threw me off, but I'd gotten more of his skill now. I felt more confident as we both surged to our feet.

Punching at him, I stumbled forward. He dodged and clipped me on the head. I pretended to fall to one knee.

He surged forward and I punched him in the groin.

The crowd went silent as he staggered back. A punch like that was a legitimate game changer, even for someone of my size.

I surged to my feet and pressed my advantage. I was on him and as I punched him in the face with one hand I pulled harder and harder on his skills with the other.

Pulling skills was pleasurable, and I felt people trying to pull me off as I continued to punch him. I felt the last of his skill connected as though by a string. I pulled. Some more and it broke.

His skill was mine, now and forever.

I stopped hitting him. His face looked like hamburger and he probably needed medical attention but I'd gotten what I wanted.

Silence filled the room and the people around me began to back away.

I must not have been as subtle as I'd hoped in the fight because Hookwolf was already gearing up and Cricket was stepping up to fight me.

Looking at them I shrugged and I dove for the crowd, going shadow the moment I hit the crowd. A moment later I was in the mirror universe.

If they wanted a fight, I'd give them a fight.

I shadowed out of my clothes and I grabbed my other outfit. I was getting better at changing into it quickly, but I hoped to eventually get even faster. Maybe Cricket's speed might help with that.

My face shifted and my body grew larger and more muscular. I'd been hiding in the shadows long enough, afraid that the gangs would come after me. However, I had worse things to worry about than the gangs, and it was time to make myself known.

This wasn't just a few drug addicted methheads out in the dark; there were enough people here that word of my presence would explode onto the scene.

A moment later I did exactly that, appearing in the middle of a confused crowd. Hookwolf had already ramped up and he snarled.

The only way I was going to get his power was to get to the center of that whirling mass of blades. The smart thing would be to simply go away and come back another time, but I was tired of being cautious.

" _HOOKWOLF_ " I said in my sepulchral voice. "YOU HAVE BEEN JUDGED."

The massive wolf of whirling metal blades charged toward me as people screamed and began to flee the room. People were trampling each other to get away from us. I'd feel bad about it, but everyone in the room had been trafficking in human misery whether they realized it or not.

Cricket did something and I felt momentarily disoriented.

It was enough time for Hookwolf to slam into me like a train, slamming me backward through the wall of the warehouse and out into the street. He was heavy, enough so that I couldn't get out from under him. Worse, his blades moved so quickly that I couldn't touch him long enough to use Rune's power on him, assuming her power would even work on him since it might consider the blades as part of his body.

People were getting into their cars and crashing into each other in their desperation to get away. I didn't have time to worry about them; Hookwolf's blades _hurt_ in a way that I hadn't felt in a while. Their fear was intoxicating, and it brought new strength into my body but I couldn't depend on it as the people who were afraid were doing their best to get away. In cars it wouldn't take them long to get out of my range.

I shut down my pain receptors as I caused my flames to brighten. His blades began to melt as fast as they appeared, and while he snarled and tried to slash at my face I reached up and grabbed his wolf jaws and pulled them away.

"BURN," I said.

Knowing how much damage my body was taking was something that I didn't want. It would stop me from doing what I had to do. This was a contest between the two of us to see who would do more damage to the other before one gave in. Even without the actual pain from the blades slashing away at my torso I still felt tremendous pressure. I could cut feelings away altogether, but that was dangerous.

I wasn't doing any real damage to him, only to his shell while he was doing very real damage to me. However, the nice thing about metal was that it was an excellent conductor, both of electricity and heat. At his center Hookwolf was very much a flesh and blood man, and the heat had to be getting to him.

For a moment I considered vanishing into the mirror world, but he was the one who gave way first.

He sprang away from me. I looked down and saw that the chest of my armor was a ruined mess. He'd managed to turn the flesh of my chest into hamburger, which if I could still feel pain would have incapacitated me and sent me into shock.

Already my body was working on repairing the damage, but I wasn't a true regenerator, not like Lung. It wouldn't happen fast enough for this battle to matter. I could have made it happen faster but that would take concentration, a luxury I didn't have.

I was on my feet in a moment. Cricket lashed forward with her blades, but I had my chain. Flaming, it lashed out. She leapt over it only a microsecond before it reached her. Telekinetically I caused it to loop around so that it slammed her in the back. She hadn't expected me to defy physics, and so she screamed as she flew forward. There was a cracking sound as the end of the chain hit her, and I suspected that she had broken ribs.

As a street fighter she was used to dealing with pain, however, and she forced herself to her feet.

Hookwolf was already lunging forward in my moment of inattention. Holding himself against me wasn't going to work so he decided to try hit and run tactics. I was too hot for him to be pressed against me for long, but slashing at me he was hoping to do enough damage that I'd bleed out.

I'd already blocked off the bleeding from the wounds he'd given my chest. It wasn't true healing but I wasn't going to bleed out anytime soon.

If I was too hot for Hookwolf, I was definitely too hot for Cricket to deal with. She struggled to get closer to me, but she obviously felt the heat on her face and body. There was only so close she could get.

Realizing that, she began to do something again, leaving me feeling disoriented.

With Hookwolf charging me I only had one choice. I dropped into the mirror universe, let my flames die down until they only covered my head, and then I dove for the spot she had just been.

Returning to the regular universe, I was dismayed to see that she had already moved.

The heat I'd generated to resist Hookwolf would be enough to burn her down to the bone, something I didn't want. Going after her, though would leave me vulnerable to him. He was already charging me, perhaps hoping that I could only hold my flames for a limited amount of time.

I spotted Cricket; she was already moving across the room away from both of us. She was fast.

For a moment I considered sending Crusader's clones after her, but that was a power that I didn't want the Protectorate to know that I had. They might assume I had it but they didn't know for certain, and I could see people stopped a block away to take video of the fight.

Hookwolf lunged at me and I slipped to the mirror universe again.

I needed to reconsider my strategy. My tactics against Cricket weren't working. She was too fast for me to lay a hand on and she was fast enough to dodge bullets. The injury to her ribs wasn't enough to appreciably slow her down. I should have wrapped the chain around her when I had the chance.

She was going to be alert to it, which meant I needed to try something else.

The Internet suggested that she had sonar. I wasn't sure whether it penetrated walls or not. Fortunately I had options that she didn't.

I tried to launch myself into the air but it didn't work. Hookwolf's blades had cut right through my flying harness. I cursed under my breath, then touched my pants, which thankfully remained at least partially intact.

Literally flying by the seat of my pants was awkward, but it got the job done. I reached the top of the warehouse and then I reappeared in the real world.

Hookwolf was stalking around the plaza below me, more like a great cat than a wolf. Cricket was looking wildly around her from a place next to the wall of the warehouse.

I turned to shadow, suspecting that this wouldn't ping Cricket's radar sense, and I dropped through the roof of the Warehouse, dropping to the floor below. I lunged through the wall of the warehouse and as I reached the other side I turned solid again just as I touched her.

The familiar touch of pleasure that I felt as I took her power was only matched by the sudden explosion in my head as I suddenly could hear _everything_. There were sounds that I'd never experienced at pitches that humans simply couldn't hear.

It wasn't so much that I had an image in my head from sonar as that I simply knew where everything was from the echoes of sounds interacting with the things around me. I didn't have to do anything; the sounds of my own body were enough to for me to get an image, and the more sounds there were in the background the clearer the image got.

Hookwolf was charging toward us both, and this time I didn't bother trying to hide. I ran toward him, aware that the world suddenly seemed to be moving in slow motion. It was almost ridiculously easy to twist as he leaped at me and avoid his flashing blades.

Before his blades had been flashing so quickly as to be a blur. Now I could see the pattern of motion of the blades and I lashed out with my chain, penetrating further into his mass than would have been possible before. Sparks flew as the end of my chain was cut off, but I could tell that it startled him.

He'd been an undefeatable monster for the people of the city throughout his entire career, but I was the monster now. My fires flared up and I leaped on top of his back.

His blades cut into my legs but it didn't matter. I plunged my arm into a space between his blades and I let my fires _flare_.

He screamed and tried to buck me off as I began to cook him alive. Even though his blades were cutting away at my arm they were melting almost as soon as they touched it.

With any luck he'd surrender if I made it hot enough. Pain, after all was the great motivator and I doubted he could cut his own pain off the way I could.

Leaping into the air he tried to brush me against the wall, but I held on with a death grip. He had to give up soon; it didn't make sense for him not to. I was hurting him now; I could tell from the increasingly desperate struggles of his wolf form.

I could feel the fear growing in him. I couldn't understand why he kept fighting; it was becoming increasingly clear that nothing he did was going to be able to dislodge me, and if he continued on this way I was going to kill him.

He slumped forward suddenly, and his blades began to retract. I was cautious, fearing that this was a trick, but I made my flames retreat, leaving only the fire on my head.

A curious smell like burned pork filled the air, and I could see that his pants were melted into his skin. He didn't have much skin left; his hair had burned away and what was left was blistered and bubbled.

He didn't scream as I touched him. Pulling his power away from him was still a pleasure, but it was almost bittersweet as I stared at the ruin of his body. I'd done worse than kill him; I'd burned him alive.

The sound of his breathing was bubbly and strange; I suspected that the heat had damaged his lungs. I could hear his heartbeat, and when I took his power I pulled the metal from his muscles as well. This was an extra shock to his system.

I needed the power of a healer if I was to continue fighting like this. My costume was falling off of me, having been almost completely destroyed. I looked more like a zombie than a person; looking down what I saw looked more like shredded meat than human flesh.

The familiar sound of a motorcycle filled the air and I almost felt relieved. Armsmaster might be able to help keep Hookwolf alive, although without Panacea I doubted he'd last for long.

The patrons of the fights had long since left, although their vehicles would doubtlessly be giving business to the bodyshops around town. I could feel the last of them pulling out of the range of my fear sense at a rapid clip.

Even the people who'd been videotaping everything were gone; I'm not sure when.

Armsmaster roared around the corner a block away and screeched to a halt in front of me less than ten seconds later.

"Stop and desist what you are doing," Armsmaster said. "You are under arrest!"

I stood up and stared at him. Part of me wanted to point out that Hookwolf needed medical attention, that I was the one who was a hero. I could tell from his expression that nothing I did would change his mind. As long as I was around he wouldn't pay attention to anything else.

Fighting Armsmaster wouldn't advance my goals at all. In fact it would only make me look even more like the villain they probably thought I was.

" _THEY HAVE PAID THE PRICE_ ," I said. For all that I felt sick about what I had done I had to continue the charade. The fear I generated might be the only thing that kept me or the city alive at some time in the future.

Or maybe I was just trying to find some way to justify what had just happened.

He launched his halberd at me, but it seemed to be coming in slow motion. I slipped across the border into the mirror universe, and then I staggered to one knee.

I'd managed to keep up the appearance of invulnerability throughout the fight, but now that it was over the massive damage that had been done to me was starting to take its toll. I didn't have the energy to stand up, much less put my clothes on.

All I could do was lay on the pavement and stare up at the sky of the mirror universe, knowing that it was a lie as I tried to repair myself.

I suspected that it was going to take a while. I hoped that Armsmaster got Hookwolf help, but I wasn't going to bank on it. Why had I been so determined to beat him? Was it Sophia's influence or was the power simply going to my head?

Letting him go would have been a tactical mistake, but it wouldn't have gotten me branded as a villain who burned people alive.

I was going to have to reevaluate myself. The thought of having to face my father when he heard about what I'd done was almost as painful as my body would have been, had I been allowing myself to feel pain instead of just weakness and the trickle of my blood hitting the fake pavement.

This was a slippery slope; how much would it take for me to be as bad as Gabriel Gray? He'd told me that with his power I'd eat the world.

What if it didn't even take that much?

Was it possible that I would be able to excuse any action so long as it matched up with my long term goals? I'd always wanted to become a hero, and part of that was doing what was right instead of what was convenient.

I didn't feel much like a hero right now.


	25. Phone

I called in sick to school on Friday.

The damage Hookwolf had done to me was taking longer to heal than I'd suspected, and I needed time to deal mentally with what had happened. The Internet wasn't forthcoming about what Hookwolf's eventual fate had been. I still didn't know whether he'd lived or died.

What I was sure of was that I felt guilty. I could have withdrawn from the fight at any time; I'd already gotten Cricket's power, which had been my main objective. Getting Hookwolf's power had been convenient but it hadn't been necessary at that moment, even though I'd treated it as though it had been.

Was I as obsessed with winning as I was with getting new powers? Losing sight of long term objectives for short term victories was a sure way of losing the war. The last thing I needed was for people to treat me as a villain because I'd murdered someone during my big debut.

From what I'd heard, that was how Hookwolf had joined the Empire. He'd killed someone and had fled to the gang to save himself.

I'd been so certain that he was going to give in. It was beyond my comprehension that he would continue to fight even as he was burning alive. I hadn't been able to sleep all night because I'd gone over and over what had happened trying to understand it.

Looking Hookwolf up on the Internet, I learned that he had a particular philosophy about fighting. Still, that wouldn't explain why he would keep fighting.

It wasn't until the early morning that I'd come to a stunning realization.

He'd kept fighting because I hadn't given him an obvious way out. He had no reason to expect that I was going to let him live, and if he was going to die anyway he'd probably been determined to go out fighting.

In the end he hadn't even really been trying to fight me; he'd been trying to escape.

His death, assuming he wasn't still alive was on my head because I hadn't given him the opportunity to surrender. I could have given that opportunity even though it didn't fit the persona I had created in Vengeance. That I hadn't was my fault.

I didn't want to be a murderer, and if I wanted to do better in the future I had to be aware that people weren't always going to react the way I would.

I couldn't help but feel that my mother would have been ashamed of me. I'd been afraid to tell my father, and so I'd been avoiding talking to him.

Part of me was convinced that all I needed was to become powerful enough not to kill, but I realized that was a slippery slope. Was there ever going to be a time I was that powerful? What combination of powers did I need to make that happen?

How was the Empire going to respond? They'd lost Crusader, Rune, Victor, Hookwolf and Cricket to me- fully a third of their Capes and with Hookwolf and Crusader gone I'd taken some of their heaviest hitters.

I was going to be tougher now; one of the things I hadn't expected when I took Hookwolf's power was that the metal was always just under the surface of my skin. I doubted I'd be able to get rid of it even with biokinisis, because it just reformed whenever I tried.

Added to the force field or aura or whatever it was that came with my biokinetic power, I was going to be amazingly tough. Neither power alone was enough to deal with an Endbringer, but together they'd come closer. Unfortunately there was no way to know how well it would work until an Endbringer was ripping you in half, at which point it was too late.

The metal under my skin meant that I was going to have to start putting Amy Dallon off. She would be alarmed by the drastic physical change it made in me and she'd almost certainly alert someone. After all, if I was mutating into some kind of monster it might be considered a matter of public health and safety for me to be brought in for examination.

If I outed myself to her she'd turn me in; almost certainly she'd been called out to at least try to save Hookwolf.

I needed people I could trust to pull me back from the edge or I was going to fall into the darkness. Dad would have made some nerdy Star Wars reference about the Dark Side, or something about anger and hate and whatever.

What I needed was to do better.

The fact that the Internet was freaking out about my encounter with Hookwolf and Cricket wasn't helping. There were a lot of comparisons to an old comic book character that I didn't even know existed. Looking him up I could see where the comparison might be made, although even with biokinisis I'd never really been able to get a fully bone skull.

Of course, with Hookwolf's power I might be able to generate an actual metal skull face. That would make me look a little like a denuded Terminator, a movie Dad had forced me to watch when I was younger. I hadn't minded as much as I'd pretended.

I'd been gradually allowing my pain receptors to return to awareness, which meant that my whole body was throbbing. It wasn't safe to go without pain and it almost felt like justice given the pain I'd given the man the night before.

There were legends about people being burned alive inside a bronze statue of a bull; some early Christian Martyrs were said to have been killed that way. The fact that I'd done this inadvertently to someone was making me ill.

I obsessed about this until noon. I felt increasingly worried about the talk I was going to have with my father when he came home. I wasn't sure whether he'd seen the Internet or not, but some Dockworker or other was bound to tell him about the fight.

At noon my phone rang. This was the phone I used in my Gamble identity; I was startled and a little alarmed. I'd thought that I'd pulled the battery so that the PRT couldn't track me home with it.

I picked it up reluctantly.

"Gamble...are you OK?" Crystal Pellham's voice came over the telephone and I felt myself relaxing.

"What?" I asked.

She was silent for a moment. "I guess you are still alive. Do you still have your powers?"

I froze.

Crystal had told me that the PRT didn't always share information with New Wave; much less than most people supposed in fact. The fact that she new my alternate identity stole powers meant that the information was out in public.

"Yeah," I said finally. "I'm still pretty beat up, but he didn't take anything permanent."

I'd known I was going to have to make an excuse as to why Gamble had come away with her powers intact while everyone else Vengeance faced had not. The easiest way to do that would be to get into fights with other heroes then not take their powers. Unfortunately getting into fights with heroes didn't seem like the brightest thing I could do.

"I thought he was stealing powers from everybody," Crystal said. "Why not you?"

"He's been taking powers from villains," I said. "I've been thinking about it a lot and I think he'd just going after those who misuse their powers."

"Parian didn't," Crystal said.

"What?" I asked sharply.

We'd both stumbled across Parian's body, and I wasn't at all certain what that had to do with my other identity.

"The PRT thinks he killed Parian to cover up the fact that he took her powers."

I was speechless.

They were pinning Gabriel Gray's murders on Vengeance?

Dad had warned me that I needed to go to the PRT to warn them about him, but I'd dismissed him out of hand. After all, how was I going to tell them I knew about the killer?

They'd want to know why I'd let him get away, why he'd targeted me. They'd have a hundred questions that I couldn't answer.

"It doesn't seem like him," I said. "I'd been tracking him for a while before I caught up to him in the warehouse and he seems pretty straightforward. I don't think he even thinks of himself as a villain."

"He burned a man almost to death," Crystal said. "Amy was barely able to save his life and she says he suffered cerebral hypoxia...that means that he was suffocating inside there and didn't get enough oxygen to his brain."

Although I felt a surge of relief that the man hadn't actually died, I was worried about what had actually happened to him.

"Is he likely to be better?"

"They won't know until he wakes up," Crystal said. "It's possible that Othalla might do better healing him than Amy since her power works a little differently."

"Are they going to let her try?"

"No, but it's only a matter of time before the Empire at least tries to set him free. Nobody knows if he's still got his power or not, but they'll at least try to get him because of all the secrets he keeps. If he doesn't have his powers anymore he's of no use to the Empire and he might be tempted to turn state's evidence for a lighter sentence."

Unspoken was the thought that they might kill him rather than deal with him without powers. The Empire seemed like the types who might do it too.

"Anyway, after what happened yesterday the PRT is wanting to get in touch with you. They're looking for any information they can get on this...Vengeance character."

"I don't really feel like talking to anybody," I admitted. "I still haven't healed up and I feel stupid for having taken on something like that by myself. I'm starting to think I need to join a team."

"There aren't a lot of choices unless you want to go out of town. New Wave isn't taking more members and I doubt you'd want to unmask if you've got people in your life that might get hurt."

"Yeah...I don't think I'm ready for that."

Dad would be dead within six hours of my unmasking, no matter how much power I gathered. It was part of the reason I'd gone to the effort of setting up the bolt hole at the theater. Should everything go south we might both need a place to lie low.

"Then it's pretty much the Wards unless you want to become a mercenary like Faultline," Crystal said. "You've fought the Merchants and the Empire 88 before and I doubt the ABB would take a non-Asian."

"I've got my reasons for not joining the Wards," I admitted. "What about forming my own team?"

"Pretty much all the independents in town have already been snapped up by the PRT or the gangs," Crystal said.

"It doesn't seem to leave me with a lot of options. It's not like I have the kind of money I'd need to hire a bunch of out of town mercenaries to be my team."

I'd worked pretty well with the Travelers, although I had a sense their leader Trickster wasn't a particularly nice person. I wondered if I could convince them to come to Brockton Bay as heroes instead of working for villains.

"Parahuman mercenaries are pretty pricey and you can't ever really trust them," Crystal said. "If they work for the money what happens if the other guy agrees to pay them more?"

"There's got to be some honorable mercenaries out there," I said.

"I haven't heard of any," Crystal said. "Of course, New Wave doesn't really associate with mercenaries. It wouldn't be good for our image."

Speaking of image...

"How is Victoria doing?"

"She's seeing a therapist," Crystal said. "Learning how to not hurt people in a world that has to seem like it's made of cardboard sometimes. I guess it's something that never occurred to the rest of us because our powers are a little easier to control."

"Is that something a therapist can teach?" I asked. "I'm a brute too and it's sometimes a little hard to know how hard is too hard...you know?"

"She's training with the Wards," Crystal said. "Part of their training is learning how to incapacitate without harming people."

As government agents they probably wanted to avoid the PR disaster that unnecessary roughness would bring up. People would probably riot if they thought PRT agents were beating heads the way I'd been doing.

"There is one silver lining to all this," Crystal said.

"Oh?" I asked.

"After what happened yesterday people have finally stopped talking about what she did," Crystal said. "Vengeance is all everybody at school can talk about."

I suddenly found myself glad that I'd decided to skip class. While stewing in my own juices probably hadn't been healthy, listening to people talk about Vengeance would have been even worse.

What if they were saying the exact things I was saying to myself? Were they putting down Vengeance as a horrible monster?

Worse, there was always a portion of the student population that seemed to lack the least bit of empathy for anyone outside of their social circle. What if they applauded what I had done?

Would I have been able to listen to all the talk without letting it overwhelm me? I wasn't sure.

I hesitated about asking Crystal what everyone was saying. In part because I was afraid to know. I'd seen the videos of the fights online but I'd been avoiding the comments sections like the plague.

The other part was that I wasn't sure the persona I was projecting would be that interested. Would Crystal find it odd that I was obsessively interested in what people were saying about the vigilante who supposedly beat me to a pulp?

Over the telephone I couldn't exactly drain her ability to detect lies.

"I'm not sure I'll be ready to go out for a while," I said finally. "I was hurt pretty bad. If I do I'll call you. Maybe we ca get together sometime."

Crystal said, "We all get beat up in this business. Don't let it make you give up. Remember why you started doing this in the first place and that'll help you keep going."

I'd started this because I wanted to be a hero. I wanted to keep people from having to go through what I'd gone through with the bullies. I wanted to keep anyone else from having to live without a mother, at least if I could stop it.

"I'm glad you called," I said. I hesitated. "Sometimes I feel all alone out here."

Dad was great, but he wasn't someone who had to deal with the things I had to deal with. He didn't have to deal with the feelings that a single mistake could mean that someone died, not just because I used too much force but also because I didn't use enough.

After all, every time I let a villain go free one could argue that I was responsible for every person that he hurt in the future. At least Hookwolf wasn't out hurting other people and even if he had to have some sort of rehab at least I hadn't killed him.

I felt a little better about my upcoming talk with Dad. It was still going to be awkward to explain, but I really hadn't had any other methods I could have used to reach him inside of his shell. Sophia had apparently been able to reach inside of things and at least partially re-materialize since she'd been able to steal my flute out of my locker, but I hadn't yet figured that out.

She'd had a lot more time to experiment with her power than I had, and as I gained more and more powers it was only going to get harder as I had less and less time to spend practicing with each power.

I needed to spend more time practicing anyway, as well as making plans for how I was going to deal with the individual members of the Empire and the other villains in town. Better planning would mean I was more likely to win with fewer people hurt.

"All you have to do is call," Crystal said. "We're outnumbered, us heroes. We have to stick together."

"Thanks," I said.

The phone call ended and I felt better. Maybe staying at home and obsessing wasn't what I needed to do. Maybe I needed to get out and get some sunlight, do something for fun instead of just obsessing over fighting and killing and crazy serial killers.

Maybe I needed a little normality.

I resolved to ask Dad to go out after he got home; maybe to a movie or maybe just out for ice cream. Assuming he didn't ground me for almost burning a man alive I thought it would do us both good to spend time together that wasn't involved in being a superhero.

Besides, my motorcycle armor and flying harness had both been destroyed. I needed to replace them before Vengeance could reappear.

The telephone rang again. It was a number I didn't recognize.

Reluctantly I picked it up. Hopefully it wasn't the PRT wanting to interrogate me over my supposed encounter with Vengeance.

"Is this Taylor Hebert?" a voice asked on the other line.

Considering that this was Gamble's phone I felt a sudden frisson of fear go down my spine.

"My name is Tattletale," the voice on the other line said. "And we need to talk."


	26. Tattletale

"I think you have the wrong number," I said.

Inside I was panicking; no Cape was supposed to know my identity, and if they did they weren't supposed to confront me with it. The fact that I vaguely remembered Tattletale as a villain made it worse.

I grabbed for my other phone and started frantically texting dad to see if he was all right. If they planned to come after Dad, I'd make what I'd done to Hookwolf look like child's play.

"I'm not calling to threaten you," Tattletale said. Apparently something of my panic had been expressed over the phone."I'm calling to ask for your help."

"What?"

"I was forced to work for a supervillain by gunpoint two months ago," she said. "And he's got a superpower that means he always wins. Nothing I've done to get away has helped."

"Even if this was the right number, what would this have to do with me?" I asked cautiously.

Dad responded to the text saying that he was finishing up at the Dockworker's union. Everything seemed to be all right, although I wasn't sure I could trust it.

"He's got moles in the PRT," Tattletale said. "I'm a thinker and he has me examine things he gets from them...including video evidence of new Capes."

She was talking about the video of me in the warehouse with my two ghosts; deep in my gut I knew it. It had been a mistake doing it all along.

"He wanted to know if I could discover the identity of two new capes in town," she said. "Imagine my surprise when I discovered they were the same person."

"I thought threatening people in their secret identity was a good way to get yourself hurt," I said. I was starting to get angry. The unwritten rules existed for a reason, and her bringing this to me at all was an implicit threat. "Badly."

"I'm not threatening you," she said hurriedly. "I know better. I saw what you did to Hookwolf yesterday."

That of course was the best reason not to call me and threaten me in my secret identity. I had the sense that she thought she was clever, maybe even the smartest person in the room. This didn't seem smart at all. It seemed like a good way to make an enemy of me, and with the power of nine capes plus my own I was particularly dangerous.

"If you know what I'm capable of, then why are you breaking the rules?" I asked. "It doesn't seem very bright."

"He has ways of knowing what I know before I even tell him. Somehow he doesn't just know what _will_ happen, but what _might_ happen. I've tried lying to him before or not telling him things and he always _knows_."

That...would be a power to be reckoned with. The ability to look ahead and see what kind of harm I might do before I even did it...things like Hookwolf might not have to happen again if I knew about them in advance."

"It makes him slippery as hell. You go to attack him and he's not even there. It's the main reason my team is so successful. If a job won't go well he tells us to stand down."

"I still don't understand what all this has to do with me."

"He gave me video of your warehouse fight and asked me to find out all I could about both of your alternate identities, including their secret identities. What the PRT knows he gave me."

I scowled. I'd thought I'd done a good job during the charade in the warehouse. If it had unraveled this quickly, maybe I should have Dad stay in the movie theater already. The PRT could be at my door any minute. Even if they didn't figure it out, if whoever she worked for had moles the other gangs probably did too.

I was going to have to be much more careful.

"Don't worry," Tattletale said, seemingly reading my mind. "I like to tell people I'm psychic, but really my power makes me a lot like Sherlock Holmes on steroids. There were all kinds of clues that the Gamble and Vengeance we saw on tape weren't the real deal, at least to me. Given that Vengeance had recently stolen the powers of Crusader and the figures I saw on tape had all the hallmarks of Crusader's ghosts, it was obvious that they were most likely generated by the same person."

"Why do you think that person is me?" I asked. "I hardly match the physical profile of either of them."

"Why create the charade in the first place unless you are trying to conceal something?" Tattletale said. "If it's just the fact that they are the same person why not show up in one identity and pretend to fight the ghost? Vengeance has Shadow Stalker's powers so he could even get away with being a little insubstantial. Being actually present could only help the ruse seem more real, so why didn't you?"

Shaking my head, I said. "I can't imagine why."

"You create two ghosts to make a third person seem as though they don't share an identity," Tattletale said. "And since it wasn't any of the Asian boys who were attacking you..."

"You assumed it had to be me," I said flatly. I thought of denying it, but it seemed futile. "How long do I have before the PRT is beating down my door?"

"I'm pretty sure the PRT bought it, at least from the memos I have access to, but I wouldn't give them any reason to reexamine the footage. People who assume they know the story make assumptions. It limits what they see. Give them a different story and they'll be a lot smarter about it."

"So?" I asked.

"He asked me to find out your identity and I have. He'll know whether I tell him or not," Tattletale said. "And he doesn't care about the unwritten rules."

I felt a chill. A supervillain with my identity would have a lot of leverage if he wanted me to do things. He could threaten to make my identity public or kidnap my father. He could disassemble my life piece by piece simply by leaking the information to the PRT.

The only reason the gangs hadn't come after me so far was that they didn't know where to find me. I'd be ambushed right and left and I wouldn't find a moment's peace outside of the mirror universe.

"You could have come to meet me in person," I said. "The phone seems a little impersonal for something like this."

I noticed that she hadn't actually named either of my other identities over the telephone, although the reference to Hookwolf would make it obvious to anyone who paid attention.

Tattletale chuckled. "I like my powers, even if they are a literal headache sometimes, and I have a feeling you'd take them and ask questions later if we met in person. I can be a little...irritating to some people, and this whole unmasking thing is a good way to get buried in an unmarked grave anyway."

Given that she was a villain, even if a supposedly unwilling one it wasn't a bad supposition. I'd have probably felt even more threatened if she'd shown up at my house and there was a good chance I'd have hurt her.

"Why are you being so open about all this?" I asked. "You could probably get what you wanted with a lot less information."

"My power tells me this is the best way to keep you from draining me dry," Tattletale said. "I really like screwing with people but I've read the PRT files on what happened to you at Winslow, and I suspect you really wouldn't deal well with betrayal."

That was true enough. I'd been screwed over by enough people that I'd had idle thoughts of going Carrie at school. Being screwed over by a supervillain might not end well.

After all, Hookwolf hadn't even done anything to me personally. He'd just been in my way. How much worse would it have been if he'd hurt me or someone I cared about? I might not have stopped at all.

Maybe she was right to be a little cautious.

"I suspect you've got Victor's powers too, and if you get mad enough it might not just be my power I lose," Tattletale's voice was serious now.

"So what do you want from me?" I asked.

"I want you to steal Coil's power and help me disassemble his empire."

"What?"

"In return I'll help you find the Capes you're after," Tattletale said. "You wouldn't like my power, it gives me headaches that leave me bedridden for days if I use it too much. But I'd happily use it to help you clean up this city."

"Take out the competition, you mean?" I asked dryly.

"Once we take Coil down I intend to steal all his money," Tattletale said. "Why would I want to bother with petty crime when I can retire to a beach somewhere with millions of dollars?"

I hesitated.

Helping a criminal steal seemed wrong. Helping a criminal steal from a different criminal seemed...less wrong?

"What if you used part of the money to help the city?" I asked finally. Dad had always gone on and on about how much work the Dockworkers were missing out on.

"Ten percent," Tattletale said promptly.

I almost suspected that she'd been waiting for me to make the demand. Was her power that good or had she simply researched me and my family enough to know that it was likely?

"Twenty five," I said. I was Danny Hebert's daughter and I wasn't going to be stiffed in negotiations.

"Fifteen percent,"she said.

"Twenty."

When I hesitated, she said, "You don't know how much money we're talking about here. It's a lot. Twenty percent would be more than enough to create jobs and goose the local economy a little. It won't be enough to completely fix the city...five times Coil's total fortune wouldn't do that, but it's enough for a start."

"We'll need to meet," I said finally. "Go over what exactly you expect me to do."

"I'm a little skittish about meeting you alone," Tattletale admitted. "I'd like to bring the rest of my team."

Was she planning some sort of trap? I went over what I knew of the Undersiders and their powers in my head. With the exception of Hellhound's dogs and whatever it was that Regent did, it didn't sound like they had much that could hurt me.

Of course, groups were known to add new members all the time. The last thing I needed was to be blindsided by some sort of Master.

For that matter, I had only her word that her power was some sort of supercharged deductive skills. It went with the supervillain name she'd chosen for herself, but people had been known to take deceptive names before.

For all I knew she was herself a master, out to bring me to Coil. Of course, if she was a master, would she need my help against Coil?

Maybe she was Coil herself. I only had her word that she was even Tattletale. For all I knew she was really Othalla trying to lure me into a trap set by the Empire.

No...if she was with with Empire they wouldn't have wanted to give me even this much warning. They'd have ambushed me on the way to school and if they'd killed me claimed it was an accident, not another attack on a Cape in their home.

Or maybe they didn't want another incident like Fleur, in which case they might try to lure me out. I found myself wracked with indecision. If I assumed it was a trap and she was being honest then she'd tell Coil and my life would fall apart. If it was a trap then I'd be attacked.

The best option was to go but assume it was a trap and be ready for it.

"If I decide to come after you it wouldn't help," I said.

She was silent for a long moment, then sighed. "We can meet somewhere public, just you and me."

"How long can you stall him before you have to tell him?" I asked.

"A couple of days," She said. "No more. And if we're going to have time to go after him it'll have to be less time than that."

"Call me tomorrow morning at nine," I said. "I'll give you the location for us to meet then."

Given the bait she was dangling, the ability to do any mistakes I made over, I could hardly refuse her. If she was setting me up for a trap it was better if I knew it now rather than later. After all, she was talking about a partnership of a sort, and I'd need to be able to trust her before moving forward.

I hesitated. "I know the PRT thinks I'm the one stealing brains, but I'm not."

"If I believed that I'd be on the first plane out of the city," Tattletale said. "Whoever is doing it is seriously dangerous."

"I met him," I said.

"What?"

It was nice to actually surprise Tattletale for once. It had felt like she was in control of the entire conversation and I was happy to be able to tell her she didn't know.

"He steals powers too, through killing...and he can look like anybody."

She was silent for so long that for a moment I thought we'd lost a connection.

"You survived a meeting with him?" she asked. "I've seen a report on what he did to the PRT guards...a whole lot of powers there that the PRT doesn't have you listed as having."

"They don't know everything I can do," I admitted.

"I think it's part of the reason the PRT is so focused on you as being the killer too. Short of Butcher or Eidolon, no one Cape has as many powers as he demonstrated or as you have. The thought of two people that powerful running around in the city terrifies them."

"Telling them about him might help," I said. "But I don't know how without giving them more information than I want them to have."

"Make sure the information comes from a third party," Tattletale said promptly. "If we're going to be working together I'm sure we can figure something else out."

I nodded, then realized how silly that was when she couldn't see me.

"I'll call you tomorrow morning," I said. I hesitated. "I don't suppose I have to tell you what will happen if this turns out to be a trap."

"You'll depower me, drain me of all my skills until I need to wear adult diapers, and then you'll kill me," Lisa said.

I blinked.

"And the rest of your team too," I said. "Assuming they're in on it."

"They don't know," Tattletale said. "There's one of them I wouldn't trust not to betray me to the boss. I wouldn't have brought him along if I'd brought the team. I wouldn't have brought Bitch either because that probably would have gone...badly."

If she was calling her teammate a bitch she probably couldn't expect that much loyalty from her.

"All right," I said. "Tomorrow then."

"Thanks for not planning to kill me," she said brightly.

" _We'll see_ ," I said, using Vengeance's voice.

I could hear her gulp. A moment later the phone went dead.

Waiting for dad to return home was difficult for multiple reasons. I was still a little worried about how he was going to respond to the Hookwolf thing.

I'd moped around long enough about it; guilt was a useless emotion. The past couldn't be changed and the only thing I could do was do better in the future. All beating myself up about it would do was to distract me from my goals.

I also had a feeling that he wouldn't particularly care for me meeting Tattletale, assuming that was who she was. He'd think it was a trap and he wouldn't want me to put myself in danger.

The thing is, there was an implied ultimatum in the choices she'd offered me. Work with her, or Coil would have all the information he needed to completely ruin my life.

Finally the door opened. Dad shambled into the entrance way, dropping his keys into a bowl by the door.

"I hear you had a busy day yesterday," he said. He looked at me significantly. "I didn't know how busy until some of the guys started talking about it at work today."

"It wasn't as bad as people seem to think," I said. "He's not dead."

"When did that become our measure of success?" Dad asked. " _He's not dead_?"

"Uh, I learned my lesson and promise not to try to burn anyone alive ever again unless they really really deserve it?" I said weakly.

"I think we need to have a talk about a few things," he said.

I sighed. I had a feeling I was in for a particularly long dad lecture. It wasn't that I didn't deserve it, it was just difficult to take.

For a moment I considered purposefully dulling my sense of hearing, but eventually I decided to simply take my lumps.

After all, being a hero sometimes meant doing things you didn't want to do, especially if it was good for you.

Maybe it would build character...I wasn't hopeful, but there was a minuscule chance.


	27. Restaraunt

"I saw the fight," Dad said. "And there's things I'm concerned about."

I'd tried to explain the whole burning thing but he didn't seem to want to listen. Once I'd failed to catch Hookwolf in his normal form burning was the only power I had that would have worked other than simply leaving.

"I'm sorry about trying to burn him," I said for what felt like the fiftieth time.

"I know," Dad said. "But that's not what I'm talking about. When you let him jump on top of you did you know you could survive his blades?"

"He didn't exactly give me much of a choice," I said defensively. "He jumped on me."

Jumping on people had to be number one on the combat play list of every whirling blade monster everywhere. It was effective and it scared people.

Dad scowled. "I gave you those earrings for a reason."

Right. I could have jumped to the mirror universe earlier than I had, escaping the whole confrontation. Considering that I had the man's powers the fight hadn't been entirely useless. I'd deprived the Empire of one of their main remaining hitters.

I flushed. "I didn't think of it. I got caught up in the fight and lost my head."

The look he gave me made me flush harder. He didn't even have to say that keeping my head in a fight might be the only way I could literally keep my head. I couldn't afford to lose control because I might get hurt or I might hurt someone else.

"It looked like it hurt," he said quietly. "Getting cut up like that."

"It did at first, but I can stop myself from feeling physical pain," I said. "Powers are handy that way."

"And how close did you come to him chewing right through to your vital organs?" Dad asked, sounding almost disinterested.

His tone of voice let me know it was a trap. This was what he was really upset about...other than the whole maiming people thing.

"I had it under control," I said.

"You jumped right back on him afterward and stuck your arm into him...it'd be like if I stuck my hand into a turbine."

I gestured toward my unblemished arm. I was glad he hadn't seen it the night before; it had looked like mangled hamburger.

"You could have lost your arm," he said.

"Then I'd have grown a new one," I said irritably. "When you're out there you have to make decisions faster than you can think, and you have to trust your gut."

"You have to remember that you aren't immortal," Dad said. "No matter how powerful you are there will always be someone more powerful, or at least with the one specific power that can kill you."

He was right of course. Powers weren't always fair, and sometimes there was no defense against someone's power no matter how much you might want there to be.

"People get dumb when they panic," Dad said. "That's why soldiers train so much, so they have something to fall back on when their conscious mind shuts down."

I stared at him, wondering if he'd thought it through.

"And where would I get that kind of training?" I asked. "If all I had to worry about was a guy with a gun it'd be easy to know what to do, but every Cape is different."

"The PRT seems to manage it," he said. "Even the gangs. You didn't see Hookwolf injuring people he didn't want to hurt, and with his power you'd think it was inevitable."

"I'm trying," I said. I scowled. "It's not as easy as it looks. All the other Capes have had a long time to get used to this and they've had other Capes to show them the ropes."

"Maybe you need more allies," he said. "Some heroes you can depend on. Didn't you say you got along pretty well with those Wanderers or whoever they were?"

"Travelers," I said. "Yeah. I haven't heard from them in Boston. They're probably dealing with the monster girl slaughtering half their bosses staff...I'll bet they're already looking for work. There's no way to tell where they'll show up."

At least he wasn't pushing joining the Wards. He knew why I was against it and he didn't push. Unspoken was the fact that it wouldn't be long before Vengeance was publicly known as a power stealer. If the Protectorate was as full of moles as Tattletale seemed to think then it wouldn't be long before it became public.

Speaking ofTattletale...

"I did get contacted by a Cape wanting me to help her get away from a supervillain," I said. "There's some other guys working with her. If I can get them away from Coil I might have some people I can work with."

"Can you trust them?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "But Coil is trying to find out who I am and he'll find out sooner than later. I don't really have any choice but to go after him."

"Coil?" he asked. "Isn't he kind of minor leaguer?"

It was a valid question. You didn't hear as much about him as you heard about the other major gangs. If what Tattletale was saying about his powers was right, though he was probably able to stay under everyone's radar.

"I think he's just really good at making people think he's weak while he works behind the scenes...like some kind of criminal mastermind."

"So what are you going to do about it?"

"She's going to call tomorrow. I'll give her a location and she'll meet me there in thirty minutes. Hopefully she won't have much time to set up a trap."

He thought about it for a moment.

"And if it is a trap?"

"She knows who I am already," I said.

His eyes widened at the revelation. He knew how bad it was to have a Cape know my identity. Fleur had been murdered at home because New Wave had insisted on going public. She had at least had powers; he'd be almost entirely unprotected. We didn't even own a gun.

Even if we had he'd have been n trouble if a dozen unpowered gang members came after him, much less Kaiser.

"That means that I have to make sure you are someplace safe before the meeting, just in case they come after you."

I was ashamed to admit, at least to myself that I might not have told him about the meeting at all except for that one little fact. It would have been easier and would have upset him less, just like showing him my mangled arm the night before would have been a mistake. If he'd seen the true extent of the damage Hookwolf had done he wouldn't have let me out of my room until I was forty.

He stared at me for a long moment, then said, "I'm guessing that we need to come up with a plan."

I loved it when Dad thought he was being helpful. It distracted him from my mistakes and sometimes he actually had good ideas.

It was funny that when I was on my own I had moped over almost killing Hookwolf. Once I was called on the carpet about it by Dad my teenage reaction was to come up with all the reasons it wasn't so bad. I felt better about it already and was ready to move on.

Had he been like that intentionally? A wise man once said the best way to get a teenager to do something was to tell them to do the opposite.

"So here's what we're going to do," I said.

He was willing to listen, which is more than I think a lot of dads would when their child was involved in things that could kill them at any day and he even had good advice. In the end we came up with a plan we could both live with.

Tattletale proved to be a girl a couple of years older than I was. She was pretty, although not in the model beautiful way Emma was, and blonde with freckles. Her hair was tied back in a bun.

She was also completely covered from the neck down, wearing black jeans, a black long sleeved turtleneck and black gloves. This was unusual considering that the weather was actually a little warm today.

"Don't really trust me, do you?" I asked.

"I don't think we're really to the hand shaking stage yet," she admitted.

We were in a restaurant. It was an Italian place outside of my normal price range and not in a part of the city I usually spent much time in. I'd thought that she'd expect me to go for somewhere I was familiar with, but there were very good reasons not to do that.

For all I knew, the PRT was still paying attention to me. The last thing I needed was to be seen in the company of a known super villain. I didn't need to be seen by anyone at school, because that would raise more questions than I wanted to answer.

Using the mirror universe I'd been able to explore the place in advance. I'd managed to get another motorcycle outfit even though getting up at seven in the morning had been irritating. The nice thing about biokinisis was that I was learning to reduce the effects of a lack of sleep, although I hadn't yet learned how to get rid of sleep altogether.

Maybe if I could get Panacea and could observe what nocturne capes did I might be able to do it to myself. As it is, the hormonal adjustments I made to myself were better than a shot of Expresso.

"This is a nice place," she said.

We'd asked to be seated in a booth in the back, out of sight of most of the patrons. It was close to the kitchen and normally wouldn't have been considered one of the better tables but privacy was more important than the dining experience.

At ten thirty in the morning there weren't many other patrons; the place had just opened. They wouldn't see their lunch rush for at least another forty five minutes.

"Guess who's paying the bill?"

She grimaced. "Being a supervillain doesn't pay as much as you think. The boss has us working for him for a few thousand a job. It's great money for a teenager, but it's not a lot considering the risks we take."

"It's a good thing I didn't want to become a supervillain then," I said. I hesitated. "I'm still a little irritated that you called me at home."

"I could have lied and called Gamble and pretended I didn't know, but you'd have done...whatever it is you're doing now, and you'd stop trusting me."

I'd been looking around and making eye contact with the few other patrons I could see, pulling at their ability to understand body language and detect lies. Getting the same skill from multiple people wasn't very efficient, but I didn't want to pull so much from any one person that they got suspicious.

The parts of the skill that were the same didn't get me anything more, but some people were better at one aspect of the skill than another, and I got that improvement.

"You are afraid of me," I said flatly. "Why?"

"Why wouldn't I be?" she asked. "My power is great at figuring out facts. People are a lot harder. I'm putting a lot of faith into the idea that you are a good person. I've been wrong before. If you wanted me dead you could kill me fore anybody in the whole place could so much as lift a finger."

I frowned and wondered if that was true. I could probably turn individual parts of my body into blades, meaning I could gut her pretty quickly. I could burn her or choke her with her own turtleneck. I could even surround her with ghosts and have them slaughter her.

"You are thinking of all the ways you could kill me right now, right?" she asked.

I shrugged. "You put it into my head."

"The worst part of it is that you are a teenager."

"Pot, Kettle," I said, gesturing toward her.

"I can annoy people to death. You could literally mince them and cook what was left," Tattletale said. "Teenagers are emotional and they don't think about what they are doing."

I wondered if she was intentionally needling me about Hookwolf. It didn't seem like a very good gambit if she was trying to get on my good side. Of course, she'd also admitted to being an annoying person.

Was admitting to be annoying just an excuse to continue being annoying?

"Nazis tend to have violent powers," I said, shrugging. "I'm trying not to take the powers of people who can summon unicorns and shoot rainbows."

"Maybe you should," she said. "Not all of the heroes are really heroes...I think you know that better than anybody. Not all of the villains are all that bad...although some of them are terrible."

"If I discover that Vista is using her power to drown puppies I'll take care of it," I said indulgently.

We were both silent as the waitress came with our salads.

"I hope you have a plan," I said. "Because I don't even know where this guy is. Much less what he can do or who he has working for him. Aren't you taking a huge risk coming here if he knows everything?"

It was the question I'd asked myself when she'd set all this up. I had powers she didn't know about; hopefully she didn't realize that I could sense fear. Anyone who knew who I was and what I could do would be petrified if they were setting up to attack me, at least unless they were sociopaths.

Unfortunately that gangs undoubtedly had sociopaths working for them. I'd learned before not to completely depend on my anger sense, but now that I had Cricket's hearing I was a little more confident.

"I can lie to him a little," she said. "I'll just tell him I'm trying to recruit you. He'll probably punish me, unless you actually decide to join, but he won't kill me right away. I'm too valuable."

The way she'd talked about him before had made him sound infallible. Which was it?

The body language skills I'd stolen from the other patrons told me that she wasn't sure herself. She feared him and hated him even more than she was letting on. She seemed honest even though she was contradicting herself.

Sometimes eve honest people did that.

"So what can you give me?"

"The location of his main base," she said. "How many people he has working for him, and their most likely weapons. His secret identity."

"I'm not attacking him in his house," I said. "Most Capes aren't as forgiving as I am, and I'm already due to have pretty much the whole city after me once they learn what I can do."

"I can help you cut their numbers down without fighting," Tattletale said. "The boss has me looking into the identities of everyone in the Empire; I'm not done yet, but I'm pretty sure he wants to make them public."

I contemplated the idea of simply passing by Capes on the street, brushing by them and taking their powers without anyone knowing. I'd avoid all the possible collateral damage of a Hookwolf fight.

"That's a good way to end up in the Birdcage," I said.

"How long do you think it would take you to drain everybody in the Birdcage?" Tattletale asked. "The PRT isn't stupid. They'll never put you in a place where you can keep getting stronger and stronger."

"So a kill order," I said. "Doesn't exactly make me confident in the plan."

I frowned as I heard the sound of car brakes coming to a quick halt outside the restaurant. The people inside were anxious and excited, a combination I was learning to association with preparing for combat.

Tattletale saw my face and she went white. "It wasn't me."

I heard the sound of a door sliding; they had to be in some sort of van. The engine shut off and I could hear the sound of guns being cocked.

The world started slowing around me as my adrenaline spiked. I glanced at Tattletale and as far as I could tell she was being sincere. Of course I hadn't taken a lot of people's ability to sense emotions and read body language so I could easily be wrong.

I was fast enough to dodge bullets, but if I did it would out me as a cape. Of course, with the metal under my skin I could easily survive being shot, so not dodging wasn't an option either.

While I debated my options, the door to the restaurant burst open and five men in balaclavas burst into the room.

"EVERYBODY GET DOWN ON THE FLOOR!"

I stared at them in disbelief. What kind of idiots tried to rob a restaurant when it had barely opened? Whether they were planning to rob the patrons or open the till the take would be better waiting for the noon rush.

Restaurants weren't exactly the best place to rob anyway. Even banks only yielded a few thousand; it hardly seemed worth the effort.

I'd stashed my costumes over in the mirror version of the restaurant intending to go Vengeance on Tattletale and her companions if they attacked me. I hadn't had time to replace the flying harness, but that wouldn't matter here.

Unfortunately I was the one facing the entrance, which meant that I was in the direct line of sight of the thugs while Tattletale was hidden. She slipped down under the table even as one of the thugs pointed his gun at me and yelled, "THERE SHE IS!"


	28. Gunnar

Staring down at the floor of the van, Gunnar wondered how he'd gotten himself into this. Joining the Empire had seemed like the smart move when Sophia Hess was rampaging through the school, beating up people who even looked Nordic for the crime of looking at her funny.

He'd never really been that against Blacks and Jews, but there was strength in numbers and getting protection from Hess and from the ABB kids was more important than holding onto some fantasy of everyone being equal.

It had been enlightening, going to the Empire meetings. Learning about the secret plans that the powers that be had, that white males had no place in the new world order...the frightening thing was that the more he listened to it, the more it made sense.

He knew that some of it was probably exaggerated but it seemed reasonable, especially when he saw the Asian kids beating people up for no reason and when he saw Hess shove the Jewish kid in the locker.

Hearing her screams had been stressful, but Hess and the race Traitor Barnes had made it clear what would happen if anyone told a teacher or let the girl out. When she'd stopped screaming it had been even worse; he'd wondered if he'd just watched and participated in a murder.

He couldn't have helped anyway because helping a Jewess would have called his loyalty to the Empire into question. Being disloyal to the Empire was worse than being a race traitor, and it could result in your family having a series of unfortunate accidents shortly before you yourself ended up in the bottom of the bay.

Still, Gunnar hadn't really regretted joining the Empire, even though he knew eventually he'd have to pay a price for the safety and security he got from it. The tattoos had hurt, but he knew he'd always be able to grow hair and cover them if he had to.

Now, though, he'd been called to take the next step, the one that would weld him to the Empire permanently.

He regretted making the call to his superior in the Empire when he'd spotted her going into the restaurant. When they hadn't found her or her father at her home they had put the call out to members all over the city. It had only been a matter of time until they spotted her.

As her spotter he had the "privilege" of joining the team that was sent after her.

He'd never had anything against Taylor Hebert, even if she was a Jew. She was a little odd and quiet, but seeing what that bitch Hess put her through had always made him feel a little sympathetic. It was confusing when a member of one race he was supposed to hate abused another member.

Was he supposed to be indignant or smug? He wasn't sure so he'd always avoided thinking about it as much as he could.

Going after her seemed wrong, especially since it was mostly meant as a distraction. The Empire was going to retrieve its Capes from the Protectorate and they'd created several hostage situations all around the city. They were hoping to pull the Protectorate and Wards away from Headquarters while they staged an attack with their strongest Capes.

The scary thing, other than the idea of the long prison sentence he might get if they were caught was that their group had a special purpose.

The scary new Cape Vengeance was mostly known for attacking Capes. He didn't involve himself in the lives of normals, at least on the basis of what information the Empire had managed to smuggle out of the PRT.

The fact that he'd decided to save a normal girl was a break in the pattern, which meant that she was important to him. If she was important to him that meant that she was valuable as a hostage, and perfect for the stage show they were about to perform.

"Put your mask on," Lars said gruffly. "We're almost there."

Gunnar hurriedly pulled the ski mask over his face. His stomach felt like it wanted to crawl out of his throat. He'd never even handled a gun outside of a few sessions in an Empire basement gun range.

He hoped that his face didn't show his fear. He'd be ridiculed for the rest of his time in school, assuming that Taylor Hebert didn't end up with her brains splattered all over the floor and them in prison with men who thought they were attractive.

The van pulled to a stop and Lars said, "Go, Go, Go!"

Racing out of the Van, Gunnar did his best not to stumble. He could hear his breath in his ears and the mask made his face feel sweaty. It was a little hard to see through the eye holes and his hands felt sweaty on the gun.

Lars went first, shoving his way through the front door.

Following behind, Gunnar found himself wishing that Taylor had already left, but he spotted her sitting in a booth by the back with a shocked look on her face.

"There she is," he murmured to Lars.

Taylor stared at him as though he'd shouted, and he couldn't help but feel a little guilty. Lars wasn't the type to feel any sympathy at all toward a Jew and Gunnar had heard that he'd committed several murders already, even though no one had ever confirmed it.

If they were going to do this he needed to look loyal. The Empire had been hemorrhaging members ever since Vengeance had been targeting their Capes. The Empire knew that it was only a matter of time before the ABB made their move and started encroaching on their territory.

"Get her," Lars said, nodding to Gunnar and a large skinhead that Gunnar didn't know very well.

Reluctantly Gunnar headed toward the booth with Taylor. He carefully stayed back so that it was the other man who got to her first and dragged her out of the booth.

She didn't look afraid. If Gunnar had been in her place he'd have shamed himself by literally pissing his pants.

Instead she looked almost angry as she was manhandled to the center of the room. She was shoved to her knees in front of Lars.

"If you've got the number for Vengeance, I'd suggest you call it right now," Lars said. He handed her a cell phone.

She stared at it like she'd never seen one before.

"What?" she asked.

The way Lars had explained it, the PRT was hellbent on capturing Vengeance. Getting Vengeance here would be a great way to get the maximum number of PRT Capes away from the headquarters.

"Say no, say no, say no," Gunnar murmured under his breath. If she really did know Vengeance it would be a terrifying horror for all of them. He'd seen what Vengeance had done to Hookwolf; a normal person would have been burned to a crisp.

Vengeance was terrifying.

She looked up at him sharply as though she'd somehow heard what he'd said. That was impossible of course; he'd said it far too quietly.

Looking up at Lars, she shook her head. "What are you talking about? The crazy Cape with the fire? I don't know him."

What worried Lars was that she didn't seem entirely convincing. She didn't seem nearly terrified enough, especially since the skinhead had a gun pointed at her head. The kind of confidence she was showing was something he'd only seen in Empire Capes and the big wigs.

Having someone like Vengeance as a guardian angel probably made being confident pretty easy.

"I was afraid you'd say that," Lars said.

The other three had finished rounding up the kitchen staff and waiters and had secured the back door. They were forcing the other restaurant patrons to push tables away from the wall so that they could sit against the wall. Altogether there were less than fifteen people in the whole restaurant, not including Gunnar or the boys.

"Get the stuff," Lars said.

Gunnar gulped and ran outside. His hands shook as he got the camera equipment. A glance down the street showed that people hadn't really started getting out at this time in the morning. No one seemed to notice him wearing his ski mask dragging a tripod and camera inside the restaurant.

The other patrons were weeping, although the girl that had been hiding in Taylor's booth didn't seem nearly as afraid as the others. Gunnar hadn't known that Taylor had any friends, much less any as pretty as this girl was.

The girl looked at him and scowled, looking away.

Gunnar felt an impulse to check his fly and see if it was open. Instead he started to set up the tripod.

"Secure the back," Lars said.

Nodding, Gunnar headed for the back through the kitchen. There was a window too small for even Vista to get through and a door, He pulled out a canister from one of the pouches on the side of his pants. It looked like a Calk gun but he'd been warned not to get any on him under any circumstances. It was a variant on Containment foam. Unlike regular foam it didn't ever dissolve. Instead it held stronger than steel.

Carefully spraying it around the seals in the door, he wondered why he was even bothering. There were several Wards who could simply go through the wall. He supposed it was primarily for the non-powered members of the PRT.

For safety he sprayed some on the window; it was possible that Vista could make the window bigger and the last thing he wanted to do was face Lars if the whole thing went sideways because he's forgotten to spray the window.

He checked both of the bathrooms, noting that Lars was almost finished setting up the camera to upload to the Internet.

This was going straight to the PHO. It was the best way to get noticed, since there were always PRT agents lurking on the boards there hoping to catch new capes or to catch old capes saying something incriminating.

"Get behind the camera," Lars said as Gunnar returned to the room.

Gunnar felt a sense of relief. At least he wasn't going to be in the picture and at least he wasn't going to have to do whatever they planned to do to Taylor.

Watching for the moment Lars indicated, Gunnar clicked the camera on when Lars indicated.

"Welcome, friends," Lars said. "Today we have a special treat for you. For too long have the members of the lesser races been allowed to sully our fair city. They've been doing their damndest to drive good, hard working proper Americans out."

He gestured toward Taylor.

"Today we take the first step in taking our city back. This Jewess and her father have been trying to subvert the Dockworkers, good honest men who deserve better."

Taylor stiffened. "I'm not a J-"

Lars backhanded her, then grimaced as he flexed his hand in surprise. "Shut up. We've heard enough from you."

She fell back onto the floor, looking up at him with a look of hatred.

Gunnar wondered why the room was suddenly feeling warm. Was what he was seeing bothering him that much?

"We've decided to make an example of her," Lars said. "To teach the other mongrels that they have to stay in their places. It is regrettable, but necessary."

No, the place was definitely getting warmer. Had someone turned the air conditioner off? It was going to make wearing the ski mask particularly unpleasant.

Taylor screamed as a clawed hand suddenly appeared between her legs. She scrambled back as _something_ began to pull itself out of the floor.

As the familiar looking head pulled itself from the floor already wreathed in flames, Gunnar suddenly realized why it had been getting so hot.

 _It had been under the floor the entire time._

He felt warm liquid running down the side of his leg and he staggered back. The monster was already out of the floor and it was grabbing Lars, who was swinging ineffectually at it, his hands passing right through it.

The monster grabbed the arm he was swinging with and it _wrenched_. There was a horrible cracking sound, and suddenly Lars arm was twisted at a unnatural angle.

Lars screamed, a sound like that of a dying rabbit.

Gunnar glanced at the door. Was it worth the fact that he'd have to run from the Empire for the rest of his life if he ran? If he stayed he wouldn't have a rest of his life.

The monster threw Lars even as the others started firing at it. He hit the wall with a sickening crack, leaving a huge dent in the sheetrock. He didn't look like he was going to get up again.

Taylor was gone; she'd probably scrambled to hide in the bathroom, something Lars would have happily done if he'd thought it would help.

As it was, he scrambled for his cell phone instead.

"He's here," he mumbled into the phone, then shut it.

Duty done to the Empire, he dropped to the floor as a bullet reflected came perilously close to hitting him. He found himself wishing the PRT would actually show up.

After all, a comfortable jail cell was much better than being burned alive.

One of the others seemed to realize that the bullets weren't doing any good. He grabbed the blonde girl and put a gun to her head.

The thing stared at him for a moment and then it disappeared.

"You don't have to do this," the girl said. "You really don't."

"Shut up, bitch," the largest of the three remaining thugs said. They looked wildly around the room. The thing could come out of the any of the walls or even the floor, or it could simply appear behind you.

Gunnar knew in that instant that they were all dead. The creature hadn't disappeared; it was letting them stew, making them afraid. The wait was intolerable. The seconds stretched into minutes and the gun he realized he was holding in his hand felt heavier and heavier.

He could hear sirens all over the city. The Empire's plan was working. In five different places drams just like this one were playing out, all at the same time. The reasons they were making up would be different in each case, but the real reasons were all the same.

From that perspective the wait was exactly what they needed. If the monster slaughtered them all then the PRT wouldn't have a reason to come.

It suddenly didn't seen at all worth it.

Three minutes passed and Gunnar could see that the others were starting to relax. The camera was still running, although it wasn't showing anything important. He could hear the sobs of the other hostages and he wondered if there was some way he could surrender without one of the others shooting him.

He almost screamed as he saw the monster again. It was suddenly just there, hand on the gun at the girl's temple. The gun went off, but the monster had already pulled it away, and a moment later there was another crack and a scream.

The monster looked more solid now, not even bothering to go insubstantial. It lashed out with its chain and the chain somehow impossibly wrapped around the throat of the second member of their group, dragging him toward the creature without even a hint of strain.

The last member of their group was firing at the thing, bullets flying from his gun. Gunnar didn't know any of them other than Lars well, but this one had seemed more dangerous than the others. He certainly didn't seem phased that his friend was being dragged along the floor by his neck, feet kicking futily, hands grabbing the chain and gagging.

Hitting the monster with bullets didn't seem like it was doing the least bit of good. Gunnar realized suddenly that he was still holding his own gun even though he hadn't fired a shot.

The monster pulled the man it was holding up by the neck and it held him up, strangling him. It stared at him for a long moment, even as the gun the man who was firing at him clicked empty.

It contemptuously threw the man with its chains even though it should have been impossible. His body slammed into the man with the empty gun and they both flew across the room, hitting the camera and knocking it down and flying into the opposite wall with another sickening crack.

The only one left in the room was Gunnar. He tried to turn and head for the door, but he felt a tremendous pain around his neck. A moment later he felt himself being dragged. His gun was lost somewhere along the way and he scrabbled at the floor.

The monster pulled him up and a moment later the ski mask was pulled from his head.

It seemed to recognize him somehow, and he felt another stream of urine going down his leg as he realized that he was going to die.

" _YOUR SOUL IS STAINED,"_ the thing said in a voice that sounded like it belonged in the grave.

Flames began to creep down the chain heading for his neck. Gunnar began to scream and struggle even harder.

Suddenly he was somewhere else. Huge creatures filled his perception; monstrous things the size of small planets. He couldn't understand what they were or even how they could possibly exist. Parts of them seemed to move in and out of reality.

DESTINATION...AGREEMENT...TRAJECTORY...AGREEMENT...

Suddenly he was on the floor again, and he was trying to understand what had just happened. He couldn't quite remember it.

The monster was standing over him, staring down at him with an inscrutable expression while the blonde that had been with Taylor was on the floor, staring up with a dazed look.

Two figures stood at the door. Gunnar felt himself slumping with relief.

There was a clapping sound from the door. A male and female figure stood in the entrance, the male wearing an unadorned gray costume, the woman wearing a similar black costume.

The Empire had been desperately hiring new Capes trying to stop the hemorrhaging of their own. These were two of the worst.

Despite himself, Gunnar felt a sense of relief.

"Don't play with prey, monster. _Eliminate_ it," the man Night said.

With that the fight was on.


	29. Breath

A glimpse of something profound had happened when the boy went unconscious. Tattletale had collapsed, but I'd had the strange sensation of both being in the room and somewhere _else_. I'd let the boy drop because I wasn't sure what was going on.

I knew him from school and he'd never lifted a finger to help me. He'd never gone out of his way to harm me either, but kidnapping and attempted torture put him beyond simple schoolyard bullying. He deserved whatever he got, although I had an uneasy feeling that I'd just given him the worst day ever.

All I had to do was touch him again and I'd know.

As he was waking up, a man and a woman appeared in the doorway. They were wearing costumes that I didn't recognize, and I'd thought I'd researched all the Capes in Brockton Bay.

"Don't play with the prey, monster. Eliminate it," the man said.

I didn't detect any fear from either of them, which meant that they were either very confident of their powers or they were sociopaths. From the way they were acting they were both.

"Night and Fog," I heard Tattletale murmur under her breath. Cricket's enhanced hearing was really very useful. "Coil keeps us updated about all their new recruits. He becomes a poisonous fog that can eat away at your insides. She becomes a powerful monster whenever anyone doesn't have eyes on her. She can't control it."

I froze.

That meant that I couldn't take her power, not if I wanted to keep a normal life. His power might be complicated. Could I take his power if he wasn't solid enough to touch? What if I took his powers when he was already in my lungs? Would I explode when he returned to normal?

Whatever happened, I needed to get the fight away from the hostages. These two didn't look like they cared about what happened to norms.

I slipped into the mirror universe as the man was surging forward, turning into a thick mist that blocked my view of the woman. So that was their plan; as long as I couldn't see her she'd be some sort of monster, presumably one that was very dangerous.

Cricket's speed was going to be very useful to me; I leaped across the intervening distance in the mirror universe and I turned.

I caught a glimpse of _something_ horrific before the woman reformed. My chains lashed out and caught her around the throat and I began to drag her back toward me.

The fog was faster than I would have thought, and a moment later my chains were in pieces as the woman was enveloped and took her other form.

She was fast; even faster than Cricket. By the time I was ready to react she'd already crossed the intervening distance, outpacing her partner who wasn't nearly as fast.

I grabbed for her, but she threw something and there was a flash of light leaving me blinded.

Suddenly I was in tremendous pain. It was like when I'd been fighting Hookwolf but even worse.

I jumped universes, leaving her behind. Whatever she turned into was massively powerful and massively dangerous.

Setting my body to healing at an accelerated rate, I found myself regretting not having replaced my flying harness.

Stealing her power would be the easiest way to deal with her, but I'd be trapped as whatever she became for the rest of my life. The only power that I had that would likely be at all effective were my flames and I'd promised Dad that I wouldn't burn people to death anymore.

Dad would tell me to simply walk away. I could already turn into something like a mist and I didn't want her power. It would mean leaving Tattletale behind, but they hadn't threatened any of the hostages. It went against the grain and it felt a little like a defeat, but it was probably the smartest course.

I returned to the restaurant, limping a little. I could appear and steal Tattletale away, but that would out her, and there was a chance that she was on the video that had been uploaded online.

There was a mirror on one wall; I became quiet and allowed the mirror to shimmer so I could hear what was being said.

"We will execute one hostage every minute until you reappear," the woman was saying coolly.

A man was having seizures on the floor while the other hostages screamed. The male cape had turned his arm to mist and was shoving it down the hostages throat. He was killing him from the inside.

Before I could do anything, the frantic movement of the hostage went suddenly, horribly still.

The man allowed his arm to reform, looking calmly down at his cooling victim.

"Who's next?"

Moving behind them, I could tell that I was unlikely to touch them before they could react, even with Cricket's speed. The woman I could touch as her head was largely uncovered except for a domino mask, but the man had a mask and a hood and I was planning to attack them from behind.

If I could get them away from the hostages the whole thing would be easier.

The world slowed as I stepped over to the place where they were. I touched both of them on the shoulder and I shifted us to the mirror universe.

Before either of them could react I was back in the other universe.

I turned to the hostages and said " _GET OUT_."

They screamed, but it didn't take them much prompting to clear the room. I noticed that the boy from school was already gone. I'd have to find him later and make it clear that his extracurricular activities were not appreciated.

Tattletale stared at me with an inscrutable expression as she passed by me. A moment later I heard the sounds of engines starting as they all raced to get away from the crazy Capes as they could.

Turning to the mirror I allowed myself to watch as the two capes looked around, obviously startled that the hostages were all gone.

"I didn't know he was a mass teleporter," the woman murmured.

I hadn't had reason to warp the mirror universe and so unless they noticed that certain things were backward they wouldn't even know they had moved.

The last thing I needed was for the Empire to learn about my bolt hole. I frowned and concentrated and a moment later my invisible counterpart formed in the room. It was the same as the ones that the clones had used to harry the Travelers in the other world.

They weren't that powerful, but they were insubstantial and could affect others without being hurt. This way I could hurt both of them while my own body continued to heal.

I looked down at my hand; metal sprang from it to form long claws. I closed my eyes and watched through the eyes of the thing I had created.

A moment later I lashed out. The woman cried out as blood fountained from her thigh. I hadn't meant to injure her that badly; the claws were new.

The man immediately turned to fog, obscuring my view and a moment later he returned to normal.

She stood entirely healed.

So turning into the thing healed her. Suddenly taking her power seemed much more attractive. With that kind of healing I'd be immensely powerful. All I'd have to do was get out of sight of my enemies and I'd be restored.

The man probably wasn't so resilient. I launched an attack on him, scraping invisible claws across his chest but not trying to penetrate anything vital. If I could get him to bleed enough he might go unconscious.

He shifted to fog and a moment later a thing came out of the darkness. Apparently being watched secondhand wasn't enough to trap her in her normal form.

My desire for her power suddenly died as I saw exactly what she turned into. It looked a little like an ink blot, if the inkblot had numerous insectile legs sticking out of it with claws everywhere. It was fast; even faster than Cricket and it was on my invisible avatar before I could even react.

I tried to fight it, but it was like fighting a hurricane. Nothing I slashed at made a single dent, but fortunately nothing the creature did penetrated my avatars intangibility.

We were at an impasse. Nothing I did affected them and nothing they did affected me. We could do this all day long and nothing would come of it.

I wanted the man's power, but getting it would be difficult while he was in his fog form. The woman's power was worthless to me. My best bet was to simply leave and drop the mirror universe when I was far away.

Hopefully they wouldn't find Taylor Hebert's clothes in the mirror bathroom.

I cursed to myself.

"Vengeance...this is the PRT. We have you surrounded. You have one chance to surrender or we will use lethal force."

I cursed to myself. With Night and Fog in the other universe my usual means of escape were cut off. I could see outside and there was a shimmering.

Vista had probably done some sort of trickery with space which would be entirely to my detriment. Clockblocker might be waiting for me, and assuming he could touch me before I could take his power I'd wake up with Miss Militia's gun to my head.

I dove for the bathroom as tinkertech bullets began to riddle the restaurant. Reaching the bathroom I switched to the mirror universe and I then went shadow form diving through the wall.

The nice thing about the mirror universe was that without electricity every wall was easily breached with Sophia's power. Her weakness to electricity in the real world was really crippling since it meant that most walls were beyond her power. What was the point in only being able to phase through walls and floors and windows?

All I had to do was get beyond the range of the PRT's cordon and then I could leave the two Empire capes to stew, trapped here until I was ready to release them.

I returned to normal form and I started to run, only to fall flat on my face as something started to grind away at my back.

It held me down and then something entered my nose and mouth and then I was in an entirely different kind of pain. The worst part of it was that I could sense exactly the kind of damage it was doing as his tendrils extended deeper and deeper into my lungs.

The tiny balloon like sacs in my lungs were dying rapidly. Without those I'd be dead in a matter of minutes despite the changes that I'd made to my physiology.

I tried to shift into shadow form, but that made it even worse as he dispersed throughout my system. My whole body turned into pain and I returned to solid.

I'd shifted positions though, and I could see the woman now. Metal burst from under my skin involuntarily as I struggled to breathe. I lashed out with an arm that was covered with blades and claws that were whirling like saws.

Blood sprayed everywhere. There was some reason that I should have been bothered by this, but the struggle for breath occupied every thought I had.

Biokinisis wasn't fast enough to heal the damage he was causing. Telekinisis couldn't affect him. I should have gone after Stormtiger; that would have been the perfect counter to this.

There was only one power I had that might have any effect at all.

I let my fire flare, burning hotter than I'd ever let it burn, and as I did I took a deep, impossible breathe that gave me no oxygen. What I inhaled instead was liquid fire.

He pulled out of me quickly, screaming as he reformed with part of his body burned. I lashed out, gutting him with my blades and as he fell I allowed my hand to return to normal. I pulled, and his power was mine.

Blood filled his mouth and I stared at him and his wife impassionately.

All I had to do to save her was to look away, but that would mean going through all of this all over again. She and her partner had murdered a man right in front of me, and they hadn't blinked an eye.

Despite the fact that they were dying they felt very little fear. It was almost as though they were as inhuman on the inside as the woman was on the outside.

My chest felt like a vice had constricted it; the damage he'd done would have been permanent to anyone else. As it was I barely had enough oxygen to stay conscious.

Graying at the edges, my vision flickered, but I held stubbornly to consciousness. If I looked away the woman would be back to normal and I'd be dead shortly after.

I could hear their heartbeats and bodily processes slowing. Dying took a lot longer than I thought it would; excruciatingly long.

There was still time; I didn't have to become a murderer.

The man was depowered, which meant that he was no more dangerous now than any other Nazi. He'd likely end up in a regular jail. His buddies might or might not spring him, depending on how useful they thought he might be.

The woman though...she was too much of a threat alive.

I could see her reaching weakly for one of the flash grenades on her belt. If she could get out of my sight even for a minute it would all be over.

Weakness filled me, leaving me unable to even stand up, much less go back to fighting.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a ball bearing. It was a relic of my time as Charon that I rarely used but kept for emergencies like these.

My fingers moved in a familiar pattern, and a moment later the ball bearing was flying.

A hole appeared in her forehead and she fell back. I wasn't sure how long her power would last even with brain damage; most gunshots to the head weren't immediately fatal even if they were incapacitating,

I pulled the bullet out of her head leaving another wound. I stared at her even as I saw him trying to crawl toward me. He was badly burned and now without his powers he had to be in intense pain but he was trying to come for me.

Whether he meant to try to fight me still or was intending to block my vision, I couldn't allow it. I sent the ball bearing soaring through the back of his head.

He stopped and slumped to the ground. He wasn't dead yet either, but he wouldn't be coming after me any more.

I struggled to stay conscious until I heard their last heartbeat, and then I passed out.

There was no way of knowing how long I was out; the sky in the mirror world reflected the moment it was made and did not advance normally unless I willed it to. On its own the faux sun had simply hung in the sky motionless and unyielding.

My breathing wasn't any better. I was struggling for every breath, and I was starting to wonder if it might be easier to grow new lungs.

Shifting into my shadow state made things easier; apparently wounds in one form didn't carry over to the other. I made my way back to the restaurant bathroom and I returned to my normal form. I shifted again, letting the ruined tatters of my motorcycle leathers drop to the floor.

At the rate I was going I was going to have to buy them in bulk, in which case I'd need a lot more money.

I began the slow, painful process of getting my clothes back on. Without the ability to breathe everything was difficult.

Grabbing the leathers and shoving them into the backpack I'd kept the motorcycle leathers in before I'd stepped into the restaurant the first time, I staggered outside into the main restaurant. I crawled on top of one of the tables and I let my fingers wander over its surface. I hadn't used the power like Rune originally had in a long time, but I didn't see that I had much of a choice now.

Focusing enough to make not only myself but the whole table insubstantial was painful. I then lifted it with Rune's power and a moment later I was flying along the surface of the street.

I waited until I reached the edge of the mirror realm and then I let myself and the table drop into the real world.

There was smoke and fires in the distance; I created another mirror universe before anyone could see me and I slipped into it.

I wasn't sure what was going on, but I wasn't in any shape to fix it. Until I either repaired my lungs or grew new ones I wouldn't be doing anything.

The thought that Panacea could fix this in no time at all occurred to me, along with the thought that it was a good reason not to take her power. After all, if I did I couldn't use it on myself.

I reached the movie theater two created universes later. I shadowed through the wall and flew upward until I reached the space I'd made for myself and Dad for times exactly like this.

Letting the mirror world fade from around me, I saw Dad huddled over the tiny portable television we'd bought. It was battery powered since we hadn't yet managed to steal electricity. He had an earphone in his ear; playing a loud electronic was just asking for someone to overhear us and come investigate.

I felt off the table with a crash.

He whirled and rushed over to me, the earphone yanking out of his ear.

I stared up at him gasping for breath. The moment that I'd let the first mirror universe vanish the corpses of Night and Fog would have appeared in the real world.

It hadn't been something I'd done in the heat of anger. I'd chosen to kill them because I'd decided that they were too dangerous to be left alive. I'd been judge, jury and executioner.

Right now all I saw was concern on Dad's face, but I was dreading the expression he'd have if he knew what I had done.

Yet there was a deep, dark, cold part of me that would do the exact same thing again. They'd been killers who had murdered a man for no other reason than convenience. Did it make me as bad as them to do the same and for almost the same reason?

I was changing, and it worried me a little.

For the moment though all I could do was heal.


	30. Interlude PRT

"This isn't exactly the win we were hoping for," Emily said. She kept her voice low and her tone even, despite her desire to scream in their faces in ways that would have made her old drill sergeant blush.

The rescue of Hookwolf, Cricket, Crusader and Victor hadn't been their finest hour, but the people before her knew that wasn't what she was talking about. The fact that the gangs now knew that their people had been depowered was mirrored by their loss of intel.

"Standard procedure in dealing with Trumps is to let the PRT take point," Armsmaster pointed out. "And as far as we know Vengeance hasn't yet picked up a ranged attack."

"He can teleport," she said. "He doesn't need a ranged attack. He'll just pop up behind you like something out of a horror movie."

"We aren't sure what the limitations are on that," Armsmaster said. "Since we don't know who he got it from. It may be limited to line of sight or to places he'd been or to places that have shadows. We just don't know, and we need to before we meaningfully engage him."

"So you make ordinary PRT members bait?" Emily asked, staring at him.

"Vengeance has concentrated primarily on parahumans and gang members," Armsmaster said. "I theorized that he would go easily on them?"

"He didn't exactly go easy on the PRT members guarding Rune, did he?" Emily said acidly. "I had to call and inform every one of their families. I'm not particularly interested in doing it again."

Armsmaster looked down at his hands. "I'm not entirely certain it was Vengeance."

"What?"

"There are differences in methodologies between some of the deaths and depowerments that concern me."

"You were the one who thought all the murders were committed by him," Emily reminded him. "You're saying you were wrong now?"

"Following the evidence is what makes for a good scientist and a good lawman," Armsmaster said. "Why kill some and depower others?"

"You thought it was to cover up the depowerings until he became strong enough for it not to matter."

"That was before Gourmand and Pedicure," he said.

Gourmand and Talon were two homeless capes, with powers so weak the gangs didn't bother them. Talon had the power to grow foot long fingernails, but didn't have any enhanced strength or stamina. Since she was in her early seventies and smelled like death warmed over, most people simply avoided her.

Gourmand was even worse. He had the power to eat anything, but his habit of eating garbage had left him sweating out a toxic sludge which was particularly pungent. He'd been a former drug user, but his powers had left him immune to drugs. This had kept the Merchants from being interested in him and no one else wanted him.

Both had showed up in alleyways without their brains within the past two weeks. The PRT had kept their deaths a secret in part because few people knew or cared that they'd been parahumans. They'd been a nuisance.

"There's no reason now to cover things up, so why kill the innocent and simply depower people who are objectively much worse?"

"He killed Night and Fog," Emily pointed out grimly.

She'd been on the scene when the bodies had simply appeared out of nowhere, right in the middle of a hundred PRT crime scene technicians.

"Given the nature of their powers I'm not certain he had a choice. He's consistently had trouble with more powerful Capes such as Hookwolf."

"He pureed her brain," Emily emphasized. "It looked like it had been through a blender."

"She could heal instantaneously the minute eyes were off of her," Armsmaster said. "Decapitation would have been the only other sure way of killing her, especially if he was hurt."

"He didn't simply take her power?"

"Either he couldn't, or he didn't want to. It's possible that he has all the limitations of whatever powers he takes, which is something we might be able to use."

"He didn't want to become a monster in his day to day life?" Emily asked. "I suppose that means that we might gather a team of Case 53s to go after him."

"I've already submitted a request for Weld for the Wards, pending your approval."

She nodded. The whole debacle suggested that they had leaks, something she was going to have to root out viciously if she wanted to keep her job. Worse, it made the PRT weak, being attacked by a gang that had lost half its members.

"There is not yet a kill order on Vengeance," she said. "Telling him that was only going to make him more dangerous, not less."

"The bullets were Tinkertech," Armsmaster said. "Specially designed to be nonlethal when hitting a solid living target but to release an electrical charge when passing through matter with the same consistency as Shadow Stalkers breaker form."

"You hoped to panic him and make him go intangible," Emily said. She scowled. "That didn't work the way you thought, did it? Those bullets aren't exactly painless, are they. I'd imagine if the Hebert girl was there we'd be facing a lawsuit."

He was an idiot sometimes. Panicking a teleporter simply resulted in someone who fled or simply attacked from another direction. From what they knew of Vengeance's capabilities, he could have taken the small team of Capes assigned to him before they could have stopped him.

If Emily had known for certain that Vengeance was only going to ever target criminals, she'd have given him the same informal pass that the PRT gave Lung. It wasn't that Lung was powerful enough to intimidate the PRT; the Protectorate could have taken him out before he ever had a chance to ramp up.

Instead it was that he was needed for the Endbringers. Whenever Lung fought an Endbringer, dozens of Capes who would have been killed survived simply because he distracted the Endbringer from their murderous rampage.

Vengeance would make an excellent distraction and had offered to fight.

The problem was that she wasn't certain when he would turn on them all. There were powers in the PRT that would synergize perfectly with Vengeance's. Velocity alone would give him the power to depower entire teams of parahumans before they had a chance to react.

The murder of two of the most dangerous Empire capes and the flagrant way he had deposited them right in the middle of the PRT was the final straw as far as she was concerned. Vengeance could not be trusted.

"Do we have any idea of who he is?" she asked.

The unwritten rules were unwritten for a reason. Every side chose to disregard one rule or another when it was convenient to them. As long as no one got caught there were no repercussions.

"The best theory we have so far is Danny Hebert," Armsmaster said. "Vengeance seems to have an interest in protecting Taylor Hebert and she doesn't have any other known associates."

"Shadow Stalker took care of that," Emily said sourly.

"It is also possible that Vengeance is a projection created by Taylor Hebert, perhaps unconsciously. We won't know whether she is a parahuman until we have a chance to get her under a brain scan."

"That being said, it probably isn't wise to put a bullet in Danny Hebert's head without making sure," Emily said. "No matter how much you might want to. If Vengeance really is a projection of the younger Hebert, the death of her father would mean the gloves are off."

Armsmaster shuddered.

"He's shown he can get on base without any problems," he said. "Which means he could simply teleport in and steal the powers of everyone on base before we had a chance to douse him with containment foam."

"Which wouldn't stop him anyway, especially now," she said.

It had been bad enough when he'd only had Shadow Stalkers ability and the ability to teleport. Now that he presumably had Fog's power he'd only be more difficult to deal with.

"Do we have a kill order yet?" Armsmaster asked.

She shook her head. "Not enough direct proof. Officially we are to treat him as we would treat any other criminal. Unofficially..."

"Antagonizing him would be inadvisable," Armsmaster said. "We should avoid conflict with him unless we are willing and able to use overwhelming force."

"The time will come," Emily said. "Hopefully before he...or God forbid they should you be right, have drained every parahuman in the bay."

Neither one of them wanted Vengeance to be another Glaistig Uaine. People had panicked when they'd discovered her powers as well. Multiple teams had gone after her and thirty two capes had died. Fifty more had been sent as a group and had had to retreat with thirteen of them dead.

Glaistig Uaine could only manifest the powers of four Capes at a time. Vengeance hadn't yet hit a limit for how many he could manifest, which made him infinitely more dangerous than her as far as Emily was concerned.

For some reason, though, she hadn't been able to convince Director Costa Brown or any of her higher ups of that. If she didn't know better, Emily would have almost suspected a conspiracy. The thing that kept her from seriously considering it was that she couldn't see how anyone would profit from leaving Brockton Bay to burn.

None of the villain groups would want a vigilant gaining the powers of a city full of capes. It was a direct threat to the authority of the Protectorate. There wasn't a government official anywhere who would want something like Vengeance wandering around their town.

They were both silent for a long moment. Emily finally spoke.

"Have we had any luck in finding Taylor Hebert or her father?"

While openly acting against Vengeance was likely to get them killed or depowered, searching for the Heberts was something they could reasonably do while acting as though they were doing due diligence. The Heberts were possible victims of crime and they were likely going to be targets once the gangs realized that Vengeance really did have an interest in them.

It would be easy to get them into witness protection, assuming one of them wasn't really Vengeance. It might even be smart, considering that the challenge by the Empire had been broadcast all over the Internet.

"We've taken a hit to our reputation," Emily said. "We need a win."

"Now that the Empire had lost more than half their Capes we may have a chance to make headway against them," Armsmaster said. "And a lack of a response to their activities the other day will e seen as weakness by all the gangs."

It might even encourage other, more competent or vicious groups to enter the Bay. The last thing anyone needed was to find the Teeth or worse the Slaughterhousse Nine in town. The Criminal Underworld loved a vacuum, and there were always upstarts ready to replace villains who fell.

"Pushing the Empire will encourage the ABB," Emily said. "But I think this time it's worth it. We need to make the bastard pay for what they've done. Show them that the Protectorate isn't something they can push around with impunity."

Neither of them wanted to admit that the Protectorate had been so involved in maintaining the balance for years that it had been effectively neutered. If they did, they'd have to ask themselves why they were in the business of saving people in the first place at all.

Still, after Elisburg Emily wasn't going to give up on the idea that the fight had to be fought. No man was a law to himself, no matter how much power he had. They all had to be taught that lesson, and she felt it was her duty to help them learn.

"We'll need some successes in the field," Armsmaster admitted. "Morale is at an all time low."

Vista scowled and stared down at the console. Everything had gone downhill since Shadow Stalker had left, and she couldn't help but resent her for it.

The investigations into Shadow Stalker's activities had been insulting and offensive. Being asked if they'd known about her extracurricular activities, either at school or after hours. She'd understood why they'd had to ask, but it wasn't like Sophia had chosen to include any of them in anything.

It made her sick to think that people thought she'd have condoned or even participated in some of the things Shadow Stalker was being accused of. People had been looking at all of the Wards differently since then; the respect that they'd formerly had had vanished as the stain of what she'd done had spread to them.

Gallant had received the worst scrutiny. As an empath, people were saying he should have known she was unstable. She heard people whispering in the halls, and she wanted to scream at them. Being able to detect emotions wasn't helpful if the person wasn't experiencing them when you were around.

Vista wasn't sure Sophia had ever experienced genuine emotions in her life anyway.

Since the PRT had managed to keep the event private in respect for Sophia's family and the reputation of the PRT, the only people looking down on them had been the PRT members, but that had been enough.

Now Sophia was gone. The trials for the nocturnal assaults she'd committed would likely take months. The bullying would probably be completely ignored, because shooting someone with a crossbow was seen as more overtly aggressive than stuffing them in a locker filled with blood and insects.

However, revoking probation didn't require nearly as much truth, and so she was going to juvie. As far as Vista was concerned, she could rot there.

Despite all her anger at her former teammate, Vista couldn't help but feel sorry for her over the loss of her powers. The cost for gaining powers was something so horrible that Capes generally didn't talk about it even with their closest friends. Having that taken away without even a chance to fight it? That was terrible.

Now that she was a norm like everyone else, and the PRT felt they'd gotten all the data they could from her, they were discarding her like she suddenly didn't matter anymore.

Vengeance was terrifying.

One touch and everything that she'd accomplished, every scar that she'd kept as a proud reminder of the fights she'd one...all of it would mean nothing. She'd be nothing more than another thirteen year old girl, forced to sit by the sidelines while the villains walked all over normal people.

Would she be discarded too the minute she lost her powers? The very best she'd be able to hope for them was to be like Piggot, old and bitter and determined to make the world pay for what had happened to her.

Looking at other parahumans would be painful if she lost her powers. She'd never be able to escape the envy or the pain of what she had lost.

She didn't have to have Gallant's powers to know that all of her teammates felt the same way. Their powers were part of them, and losing them would be like losing a limb.

Going up against Vengeance the day before had made her anxious even though she'd never even seen him. She'd created the spacial distortions that had locked him in, even though she'd wondered if that would work against a teleporter.

Apparently the answer was no.

Now the public was criticizing the whole operation, wondering why they had been more interested in capturing an apparent vigilante than rescuing a restaurant full of hostages, including a schoolgirl who had already been victimized.

"A slow night?"

Startled, she looked around.

She smiled as she saw the new PRT agent. He'd only started last week and he was already a favorite among the women agents. He was handsome in an adult sort of way and there was a certain aura of danger about him that apparently the older women found intriguing.

He was diligent too; every time she saw him he was researching the Capes in the Bay, learning everything the PRT knew about all of them. If all the agents had his sort of dedication in Vista's opinion the agency would be a lot more effective.

She'd caught him staring at her from time to time, but not with the kind of creepy sexual vibe she sometimes got from older men when they thought she wasn't looking. He gave all the Capes the exact same look, male or female. He almost looked hungry.

It was a pity; a lot of people wanted to be Capes, and for some people the PRT was the closest they could get to being an actual Cape themselves.

"Here's some coffee," he said, smiling. "I know the evenings get long."

The coffee was hot, but like most government coffee didn't taste good enough to be used as anything but paint thinner. She took it anyway, gratefully.

She shrugged. "I'd rather be out there but at least I'm getting paid."

He nodded and took a sip of his own coffee. He was flipping a pocketwatch around his fingers. She'd seen him with it before, but she'd never seen him open it.

"Does it work?" she asked.

He glanced at her and shook his head. "It's just a good luck charm. My father was a watchmaker and this always reminded me of him."

"Well, thanks for the coffee, Gabe," she said. He was staring at her again, at the top of her head. "Was there anything else?"

He shook his head and turned. As he left he whistled a tune she had never heard before.

He was such a nice guy.


	31. War

Growing new lungs proved to be easier than repairing the damage Fog had done to the old ones. Despite that, it had taken two long, painful days.

The shelter we'd created in the old theater wasn't as good as we'd hoped. We hadn't stocked up on anything but the bare necessities; Ramen noodles and canned foods weren't exactly enough to keep one's spirits up. I vowed then to make sure to get things with sugar, even if I had to replace them.

I still needed to drain a plumber as well. We were forced to use mirror universe toilets, each of which only had enough water for one flush. That meant that we had to range farther and farther, which was difficult when breathing was a chore.

Once I realized I could simply drop the universe and recreate it I felt stupid.

We had to eat in the mirror universe as well, lest the smells of cooking alert the people in the neighboring buildings that someone was there. The little camping stove we'd gotten from the basement wasn't nearly fast enough to heat more than one can at a time, which was inconvenient at best.

Despite all our complaints we remained undiscovered, which was a good thing. I knew that once we went back into the world the PRT would have questions, possibly for us both. Worse, the time limit for Coil to know who I was was getting close to passing.

It was a day and a half before I had enough breath and enough courage to bring up what had happened with Dad.

"Dad...things didn't go well."

He didn't say anything; he just looked at me as he spooned yet another plate of hot beans into a paper bowl.

"Tattletale didn't betray me...or at least I think she didn't...the Empire came after me."

His eyes widened at that. If my identity was known then our lives in Brockton Bay were over. We'd never be able to step outside our door without gang members attacking.

"They thought Vengeance was protecting me," I said. "They still think that, as far as I can tell."

"So they don't know?"

"It's almost as bad," I said. "If they think they can get to him through me they'll never stop. They'll keep coming until one of us is dead."

He looked down at his beans. "You never said what happened to those Capes...the ones who tried to kill you."

I scowled. "They won't be coming after us again."

We were both silent for almost a minute. He knew what I was talking about, but neither one of us wanted to say it out loud.

Learning that your daughter had killed, even in self defense couldn't be easy for a father. The last thing I wanted was for him to know that I hadn't had to do it.

I didn't feel as guilty as I'd have thought I'd have felt. I felt more guilty about Hookwolf. Maybe it was getting easier, or maybe I was just in denial.

I'd walked barefoot in the snow one year, marveling that it wasn't actually painful. I'd thought that maybe this was my parahuman power. It wasn't until I'd returned to the warmth that the crippling pain had returned to my numb feet.

Was I simply numb, or had I decided that the Nazis didn't deserve to live? Either possibility was disturbing. One meant I had a lot of pain to come.

The other meant I was potentially on the path to being like Gabriel. Was this how it had started for him?

Had he felt guilty at first as he took his first heads, but found it easier and easier over time? Would I someday feel nothing as I killed people who were inconvenient to me or whose agenda I didn't agree with?

After the way they'd killed that bystander it had been easy to kill them. I'd rationalized that if they killed that easily they had to have done it before. They had to be sociopaths, less than human. Yet now I'd killed, almost as easily as they had.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he asked finally.

I shook my head. I wanted him to have the illusion that I was still his little girl, at least for a little longer.

"What do we do then?" he asked. "The authorities are going to have questions for us, and you said Armsmaster has some way of knowing whether we're lying."

"I might be able to spoof it," I said. "It's tinkertech so I can't be sure, but it most likely uses microexpressions to judge whether someone is lying or not. I can control those, with a little bit of work."

"They're going to wonder where I went too, and I don't have any convenient lying abilities," he said.

"I don't have any way to give you any," I said. "Not yet. I might be able to find someone if I look hard enough."

"We could always simply tell them the truth," he said.

We stared at each other for a moment and then we burst out laughing. It felt good to be able to breathe well enough to laugh, even though my body was still reabsorbing my old, dead lungs. It was a disgusting process.

With the killing of Night and Fog, I'd sealed my fate. The PRT was closed to me now, and all my arguments from before were moot. It didn't matter whether I wanted to join the Wards; while they'd been willing to accept a violent Vigilante, they certainly weren't going to take a two time murderer and maimer of men.

I was getting closer and closer to the Birdcage or a kill order. It was only a matter of time.

"We could move," Dad said.

I stared at him. He loved this city. His friends were all in the Dockworker's union, and he'd spent more than ten years trying to make sure that they had a fair shake. His dream had always been to bring the city back to its former glory, to clean up the gangs, to make the place safe for families.

He was the reason I'd wanted to be a hero.

It wasn't because Alexandria was so cool...well, maybe a little. It wasn't because I'd wanted glory or recognition. It was because seeing the world beat my father down a little more each year had hurt me and I'd wanted to give him a little bit of the spark that I'd seen in him, especially since it had almost completely died after Mom died.

Now he was suggesting leaving it all behind.

Money wouldn't be a problem. I'd kept almost twenty thousand dollars here in the movie theater, hidden under a massive old projection machine. I could get more easily. Setting up life in a new city wouldn't be easy unless we got entirely new identities though.

There were too many ways for the government to track us. ATM machines, credit card transactions...from the few trips we'd made when Mom was still alive, I didn't think you could even rent a hotel room without a credit card.

You certainly couldn't show up with a suitcase full of cash and buy a house, at least not without government agents showing up at your door the next day. We'd be trapped in a hellish existence, always looking over our shoulders until one day they came for us.

I shook my head.

"It wouldn't work," I said, "Not unless we went into the Witness Protection Program, and we don't exactly have any information they need desperately enough to give us sanctuary."

"So what do we do?"

"I'll just have to take care of them all," I said.

He looked at me alarmed. "Like you took care of the last two?"

"No," I said. "I didn't have a choice then. I will now. I'm just going to have to make their whole organization collapse so they stop coming after us."

"There has to be at least eight hundred unpowered members," he said. "Even if you get all their Capes..."

"If I get all their Capes they'll stop coming after me," I said. "And I know a Thinker who knows where they live."

"That's...against the rules, isn't it?"

"They broke the rules when they came after me," I said. "And if they knew who I was and where I lived, you think they wouldn't come for me?"

He nodded wearily. "I just worry. I keep telling you that you aren't immortal, and you come back barely able to breathe and looking like death warmed over."

"If things start to get too bad I'll just take Lung," I said. "He has regeneration. I didn't want to take him because of school, but if they are already coming after us..."

"I can take leave from work," Dad said. "If you go and maybe get us something better to eat than beans. You may be able to control your body after you eat this stuff, but it's making me pretty gassy."

The other thing we were going to need was showers. We were both getting pretty ripe after two days and even if there had been water in the mirror universe there wouldn't have been any power.

I could probably rig something up...an old steel barrel maybe, filled up with a hose somewhere no one would notice and then heated up with my flame powers, although with my luck I'd probably scald Dad bad enough that he'd have to go to the hospital.

Knowing when things were too hot wasn't something that I was still able to do. I seemed to be immune to heat, which meant that while I could feel that things were pleasantly warm anything over a certain threshold all felt the same to me.

In the meantime we'd probably have to shower at Winslow in the middle of the night. I knew Winslow couldn't afford guards to watch over the place and the showers were only lukewarm, but they'd be better than nothing.

"And the PRT?" he asked.

"They can wait until I'm done with the Empire," I said. "And Coil. It looks like I'm taking a week off of school."

The PRT would undoubtedly have Blackwell waiting to call them the moment I showed up for school. I'd have worried about my academic career more if I felt like I had one. More and more I had a sense of doom, like a trap was closing in on me.

He scowled, but didn't argue. Going to school would just endanger my classmates or get me captured or outed.

"Are you done?" I asked. "I have to make a call."

He nodded and scowled. He dropped the can into a wastebasket and started to gather up the camp stove. Once I dropped the mirror universe the food would appear in the basket in the real world, which was why I only planned to do it late at night.

Hopefully Tattletale would have good news for me. With the names of the Empire members beating them wouldn't take long...assuming they hadn't added more deadly Capes like the last two I'd fought.

Working with outdated information was the worst when you were an ambush predator. It was the best way to get ambushed yourself.

* * *

"A meeting is being set up," Tattletale said. "All the gangs are calling a truce to figure out how to deal with you."

"Where and when is it?" I asked.

She was silent for a long moment. "Not even you can take on all the members of all the gangs in town at once."

"You wouldn't think so," I said. "I'll bet they wouldn't think so either."

I wasn't nearly as confident as I sounded, but the opportunity to get that many Capes in one room was too good to pass up. My biggest problem with the gangs was that I didn't know where they lived. Tracking individual Capes down was difficult and time consuming.

With the threat to Dad there wasn't time to do time consuming.

"Breaking the truce like this would get me killed," she said nervously.

She didn't seem like the kind to become nervous. I suspected that she was trying to play me, which made me itch to take her power so I could see what she knew herself.

Hearing her gulp, I wondered what sign I'd given her power to tell her what I was thinking. Of course, it didn't take much to understand what I was thinking around other Capes.

I was a little like a woman jealous of other people's clothes; I couldn't help but imagine myself trying them on.

"You want to tell me," I wheedled. "It's in your name. Don't you want to see the look on their faces?"

"When they murder you?" she asked. "Not particularly."

"If I've got a good enough plan they'll never even see me coming," I said. "Especially if you tell me how to get to a couple of Capes beforehand. I know you've been researching them for Coil."

She was silent for a long moment before she sighed.

"Circus works for Coil...if you take their power he'll know I was helping you."

"Them?"

"Even I don't know whether they are male or female. There's something about their power that lets them have completely different body language in each identity."

Circus's power would be useful even if that was all there was. I was envious of her purported hammerspace. Being able to keep my costumes with me at all times would be incredibly useful and if I could keep other things in it too I'd be able to have a lot more options.

"Then give me Stormtiger," I said.

Fog's power was a game changer for me. With it and my immunity to flames I'd be deadly to almost every Cape in the Bay with the sole exception of Stormtiger. That meant that I had to take him out before the time of the attack.

She sighed. "This is a blatant violation of the rules."

"Like contacting a vigilante in her civilian identity?" I asked. "If I was anyone else I'd have gutted you."

"You're never going to let that go, are you?" she asked. She scowled. "If you go after Stormtiger and take his powers, will that be enough? Or are you going to keep harassing me about the location of their meeting."

"If you didn't want me to know you wouldn't have told me," I said. "Seriously."

She sighed. "The meeting is tomorrow at Somer's Rock...it's a pub. It's set for seven P.M. After dark."

Tattletale was quiet for a long moment. "You won't steal from the Undersiders, will you?"

"I'd really like Grue's powers," I admitted. "It'd go really well with my whole fear shtick. I'll try not to but I can't make any promises. If they attack me I may come after them."

"I can't warn them in advance," Tattletale said. "Coil would know somehow. I doubt he'll actually be there in person. Undoubtedly he'll have a body double there to represent him."

"Again, I can't make any promises, but I'll try."

As much as I'd once envied Bitch's power, learning that it didn't let her master the dogs meant that it would be inconvenient at best. With my luck the very dogs I'd empowered would come after me. I didn't even know any dogs.

"Give me what I'll need to take Stormtiger, and I'll stop bothering you," I said.

She sighed. "You want his address?"

"Please."

She gave it to me, along with some suggestions about how to deal with him.

Part of me was a little reluctant about attacking people in their homes. That was a good way to have everyone after you.

Unfortunately, with my powers everyone was already going to be after me. The best I could do was to gather the powers as quickly and efficiently as possible and this was the best thing I could think of.

His power gave Stormtiger superhearing and smell, with the winds bringing the sounds and smells directly to him. I had to wonder how that was going to synergize with Cricket's hearing. The important thing was that he would hear me coming no matter what happened unless I appeared right on top of him.

I could probably reduce the scent of my sweat and my body odor with biokinisis, but there wasn't anything I could do about the smell of my costume or the sounds I made as I moved unless I stayed perfectly still, and even then there was the sounds of my breathing or my heart.

I had to find a way to sneak up on a man who had made a career of being canny and avoiding attacks before they even happened.

It was going to be a piece of cake. I could already think of three or four ways to do it and I was sure that more ways were going to occur to me over the next six hours.

The Empire had declared war when they'd kidnapped me, when they'd threatened my father and had tried to torture me live on the Internet. They were the ones who'd broken the unwritten rules first. I was simply following their lead.

If they attacked me with a knife, I was going to attack them with an axe. If they attacked me with an axe, I'd attack them with a gun. If they brought a gun, I'd bring a bigger gun, or maybe a bomb.

They were about to learn what it meant to try to ruin my life

I was going to show them what war was.


	32. Pandemonium

Working for the Empire wasn't always easy, especially these days with their numbers down and their reputation shot to hell. Still, the benefits were good and it was good to see the less races cower when they realized who they were up against.

Claus scowled as he listened to his microwave ding.

He was starting to think that the leadership didn't have a plan. Rescuing all their comrades had been meant to be a masterstroke, designed to bring the Empire back into prominence and to convince their backers overseas that they were still relevant.

Instead they'd gotten people who were pale shadows of their former selves, largely worthless except for their information on the Cape who had done it to all of them.

There wasn't really all that much to go on, and the event with the Hebert girl had gotten two of their most valuable Capes murdered and tossed contemptuously into the middle of the PRT investigating. Their plants in the PRT suggested that the PRT was about to start pushing back too.

No one needed the PRT to get ahead of themselves. Claus understood the importance of reputation as much as anyone, but the PRT was primarily a toothless organization more interested in public relations than in actually policing the cities they were ostensibly protecting.

They needed to be shown their place, but Claus was starting to wonder whether the current leadership was actually capable to following through. They needed to hire mercenaries if they had to, enough to defend their territories and push the enemy back.

Instead, Kaiser was talking about making a truce with their enemies to go after the nightmare cape.

Claus didn't see how that would help anyone. They were already all planning to go after him; no one needed any encouragement. All a truce would do would be to give the enemy time to get their forces ready. Lung and his cronies were going to take every advantage they could, and if the Empire bled any more Capes during all this they'd be sure to attack.

Being a man of habit was all well and good. Claus himself liked to eat at the same time every night. He rarely varied from one of a handful of frozen dinners unless he was out and working. Habits were handy. They provided structure when life was inherently chaotic and difficult.

As he opened the microwave steam billowed out across this face. He frowned as he thought he smelled something, but the smell of the food was overpowering.

Most likely it had been nothing.

Living alone had been a choice he'd never regretted. Women were difficult enough to live with for normal men. Being able to smell perfumes and bodily functions and assorted scents would have been maddening. He had enough control that he could have chosen not to smell them, but that would have left him vulnerable to attack.

Not that anything ever happened in his neighborhood. He'd listened in to the banal lives of his upper middle class neighbors long enough to know that the cul de sac he lived in was one of the most boring places around. Given the rest of his life he liked it that way.

He carried the food to the table, letting it cool as he watched the news.

The media was incredibly biased against people who were just trying to stand up for their rights against the ravening hordes. Without the Empire the lesser races would have run riot throughout the Bay. They were the last line of defense against the barbarians at the gate.

Claus sat and lifted his fork to his mouth. He froze suddenly.

There was something behind him.

A little known part of his power was that he could detect movement through the motion of air currents. Everything had to pass through air and he could sense their movements.

He whirled with a speed borne of five years of fighting in the pits. He lifted his arm and there was nothing there.

Squinting he tried to see if there was something in the shadows. He normally kept the lights down low before bed because it was easier to sleep. Now he regretted it; the shadows were playing tricks on his mind. He almost thought he saw something crouched in the corner.

A small effort of will created a wind gust strong enough to flip the light switch. It threw up dust, but it was worth it when the lights came on revealing that the crouching figure was just his costume thrown over a chair.

He squinted, the light hurting his eyes a little. It probably wasn't good to eat in the dark, but he found that it helped him ignore the poor quality of the food.

A gesture and the light switched off.

The shadows were there again, but now he knew what they were. He was being foolish, letting himself get spooked. The new Cape was almost like an urban legend version of the classic boogieman, except this time specifically for Capes.

As he started to turn back to his meal he thought he saw the shadow move out of the corner of his eye.

He scowled.

His power was telling him that nothing was moving, which meant nothing was moving.

Still, better safe than sorry. He lashed out with his claws, trying to hit the area above his costume. If someone was there they'd be sorry.

Nothing.

He laughed a little to himself and turned back to his dinner.

A face out of nightmares was in front of him and before he could react he felt a hand around his throat. He struggled against it, and he tried to use his power but something was dreadfully, horribly wrong. He couldn't feel the connection he'd had to the wind from the moment he'd triggered. He felt deaf, with sounds suddenly being incredibly dull and lifeless. The rich smells which normally filled the air were gone. Everything seemed flavorless and bland.

The hand on his throat seemed to be made of iron.

" _YOU HAVE ABUSED YOUR POWER_ ," the thing said in a voice that sounded like it came from the grave. " _NOW YOU DO NOT HAVE IT."_

Claus had been a fighter long before he'd been a parahuman. Simply because he'd lost his powers didn't mean that he wouldn't go down fighting.

Part of him wondered if this was how Night and Fog had lost their lives.

He lashed out, striking the thing in the face. It didn't even flinch. Strikes to the joints, to the vital nerves, nothing he did mattered. It was as though the thing felt no pain, or maybe he was simply doing no damage to it.

Trying to go for the eyes was the only thing that garnered a reaction. He felt the cloth on his arms suddenly tighten into a powerful grip, to the point that he felt as though he was in a vice.

The thing stared into his eyes, and for a moment he didn't understand. It was choking him, but not enough to make him unconscious. It was holding him, but it wasn't doing anything else.

It wasn't until he tried to think of a way of twisting out of the thing's grip and couldn't that he realized what was happening.

 _The thing had taken Victor._

The horror of his situation was suddenly overwhelming and he started to scream.

Somehow the winds didn't carry his screams any farther than the four walls of his home. In the space of ten minutes Claus Muller lost everything that made his life hold value and then some.

The thing was even more of a nightmare than he'd been told, and he could only pray that it would leave him alive when it was all said and done.

Even if he was he wasn't sure how much there would be left of him.

Stepping into Somer's Rock, Tattletale felt as though she was going to her own execution. The restaurant was a dive and it was relatively small. Once the powers started flying the chance of getting caught in the crossfire was going to be intense.

It didn't help that Coil was suspicious of her. She'd had to tell him what she knew, claiming that she was on the Empire video because she'd been trying to make an offer to Taylor to join the Undersiders. She'd tried to convince him that Taylor was doing his work for him, crippling the other gangs in town which would leave a vacuum for him to step into.

He seemed to be buying if for the moment, but she couldn't help but notice him watching her. He had to suspect that she was up to something, and as much as she was trying not to show how nervous she was about this meeting she wasn't sure she was being entirely successful.

She couldn't even warn the others, although she had told them that she was anxious about the meeting and that they should make sure to be as close to the exits as possible. The lie she told them was that she was afraid the Empire was getting desperate and might break the truce and attack.

There was a booth in the back that they took; it was near the kitchen and was the route they were planning to escape with if things went sideways. Taylor had refused to discuss her plan of attack with Lisa, claiming that knowing would make her too likely to give something away.

Lisa didn't see the point since she'd know soon after the attack began. Maybe it was a way of making sure Coil didn't somehow find out.

They settled in and Lisa wrote her order on the slate. The proprietor's had made a living out of being deaf, although she wouldn't be surprised if they could lip read.

The others started filtering in. The Empire was first, and it looked as though they'd brought most of their remaining members.

Kaiser, Fenja, Menja, Stormtiger, Krieg, and Othala were all there. To her surprise Crusader and Victor were there in full costume as well. She'd thought both of them had been depowered.

Oddly enough Purity wasn't among them. Tattletale would have thought Kaiser would have done anything he could to bring her back into the fold but apparently he hadn't been successful.

She frowned. She'd thought that Taylor had planed to move against Stormtiger. Looking closer, her eyes widened.

Explaining how she hadn't caught on to Coil was going to be difficult, but she'd manage.

Coil's body double came in alone; Lisa assumed he was in radio contact with the real Coil, although it was possible Coil already knew how this meeting was going to go and had already told him what to say. It was frustrating not knowing exactly what Coil's power, despite all of her suppositions and suspicions.

Faultline was next, along with her crew, followed by Skidmark and Squealer and Mush. No one wanted to be seated anywhere near any of them.

Lung came in last of all, along with Oni Lee. It was a testament to his person power that although his group had the fewest parahumans of any group in the Bay, and they were outnumbered by the Empire in nonpowered members as well he still had a seat at the head of the table, with Kaiser at the other end.

Everyone was curiously quiet. Even Skidmark, normally someone who wouldn't miss an opportunity to make a crude remark at anyone else's expense simply stared at the table of the booth he was in.

"We all know why we are here," Kaiser began.

"Rumors," Faultline said. "Rumblings about something that cannot be."

"The rumors are true," Kaiser said. "There is a Cape in Brockton Bay that steals powers permanently."

"The same one that's completely wrecked you knobgobblers?" Skidmark asked from the corner he was in. "If he's only going after you why should we care?"

Kaiser sneered, but the question couldn't simply be ignored.

"Suppose they do take us all," Kaiser said calmly. "What then? Will their appetite for power be sated or will they want more...always more?"

There was an uncomfortable rustling around the tables. Tattletale knew that they were all thinking about the answer they'd give if that had been the power they'd gotten.

"The PRT hasn't said anything about a Cape like this," Faultline said. "Our first information was the video of the ill advised kidnapping attempt by your organization."

"This Cape hasn't just stolen our birthright," Kaiser said. "He is also a serial killer. He has murdered at least six parahumans in the past several weeks and that is assuming he is not also visiting neighboring cities."

"You're talking about the Watchman," Grue said. Unlike the rest of their group he was actually sitting at the table, although he'd taken care to sit as lose to the kitchen as he could. "That's just an urban legend."

Rumors had been going around about a murderous Cape who had a musical watch. Tattletale wasn't sure how the rumors had started, but she was reasonably sure that Taylor wasn't the one doing most of the murdering.

"Tell that to Rune," Kaiser spat out. "To Night and Fog...to Parian, Talon and Gourmand."

"Who?" Regent asked, whispering to her.

"If we don't stand together we will fall," Kaiser continued. "We are being picked off one by one, like sheep for the slaughter."

Lung was silently impassive at the other end of the table. Oni Lee stood behind him.

"I will burn this Watchman before he ever touches me," Lung said. "And I will glory as he brings about your downfall."

Kaiser flushed red. "You are being a fool."

Tattletale felt herself tensing. Given Lung's temper, it might very well be that her prediction of violence might come true even without Taylor intervening.

What was she waiting for?

"What will you offer me for this truce you are asking for? Territory? Money? Girls?" Lung leaned back in his chair.

Kaiser flushed an even deeper hue. "The PRT has abandoned us. They put the word out to all the heroes in town but didn't tell a single villain that a serial killer was out there. They are waiting for us to self destruct so they can pick up the pieces."

"I heard this bogeyman of yours got a Ward," Grue said. "Is that true?"

"Depowered, not killed," Kaiser said. "Which is the only reason the PRT isn't touting this monster as a hero."

"So what do we do?" Faultline asked. "A truce alone won't get us any closer to killing or capturing this thing."

"We work together," Kaiser said. "We share information...pool resources."

There was a rustling around the table as people talked in low voices among themselves. The first one to speak was a surprise.

"With you?" Skidmark snorted. "I wouldn't share used toilet paper with the likes of you."

"You _are_ used toilet paper," Kaiser said. "As your name indicates. Of us all, you are perhaps the safest. Your power is hardly worth having, your territory is a joke and the members of your group, such as it is are hardly better than drug fueled rabble."

"Screw you too!" Squealer said. "We don't have to take this."

"But in the end he will come for you as inevitably as death itself. When the Bay is empty of other parahumans he will find you wherever you may hide and he will take you."

"You speak like a coward," Lung said. "As though this mythical Cape is an Endbringer in human form."

"It is," Crusader said. "When it came for me there was nothing I could do."

Kaiser glanced sharply at him but didn't say anything.

"If they are no longer among the Chosen why are they here?" Lung asked. "Are you trying to hide your weakness?"

"They are here as an example," Kaiser said. "An example of what could happen to any of us if we let this go."

"You are asking us to take a risk to protect your organization. It's clearly advantageous to you, but what about the rest of us?" Faultline asked.

"We are willing to hire your crew for this," Kaiser said. "While the Empire may have lost some of its stronger members we are still financially flush with cash."

They wouldn't be once Tattletale got through with them. The moment the Empire started falling she intended to loot every bank account she'd gotten hold of while researching them for Coil.

Faultline frowned. "Attacking someone who takes powers doesn't seem particularly wise."

"Neither is waiting for you to come for you," Kaiser said. "This thing doesn't even respect the unwritten rules. It came for Stormtiger and he barely escaped."

He turned and Stormtiger stepped forward. He clapped a hand on Kaiser's shoulder and Kaiser stiffened.

"Did you really escape from this thing?" Faultline asked.

Kaiser stiffened suddenly and then he started to scream as something was happening with Stormtiger's hand on his shoulder that Tattletale couldn't see.

" _I DIDN'T ESCAPE,"_ Stormtiger said in a voice that sounded like it came from the grave. " _AND NEITHER SHALL YOU."_

Stormtiger wore the laziest costume ever next to Lung; a pair of pants with chains and a Tiger mask. Tattletale wondered how Taylor had made peace with going shirtless, even if she currently had a familiar male torso.

The metal of Stormtiger's mask split open, revealing a face that was something out of a nightmare. Flames rose from the creatures head even as metal exploded from his skin. The metal was shaping into a close approximation of the motorcycle leathers Vengeance usually wore.

A moment later the monster stood among them.

"That's our cue to leave," Tattletale whispered. Once powers started flying the odds of becoming an accidental or maybe even slyly intentional casualty went up exponentially.

Everyone sat frozen for a moment, stunned by what had just happened.

A moment later, Pandemonium reigned.


	33. Burning

Blood exploded from Kaiser's shoulder and Tattletale realized that whirling blades had exploded from Vengeance's wrist, digging through his armor at a joint so her hand could get to the flesh below. He slumped over, and from the angle she was at she couldn't tell if he was dead or just unconscious.

Lisa knew she had to think of Vengeance as being someone totally separate from Taylor. Selling the idea that she hadn't known what was going to happen would be easier if she kept the separation in her mind.

People were trying to jump back from the table but Vengeance was blindingly fast. He started to slow down as he approached Krieg, slowed by Krieg's control over kinetic energy, but a moment later he winked out of sight.

Before the chairs had hit the floor though she was back, her hand without the blades grabbing Krieg by his bare neck. Krieg stiffened and the field surrounding him suddenly collapsed. A moment later Krieg was flying through the air towards Lung.

Unlike everyone else, Lung hadn't jumped back. He hadn't even gotten up from his chair. He simply stared impassively at the sudden chaos. As Krieg flew toward him he swatted out with a powerful hand and Krieg went flying to the side, hitting the wall with a crack. As he fell to the floor his neck was twisted in an unnatural angle and his feet went into sudden convulsions.

Lung jerked his head toward Oni Lee who appeared suddenly at Vengeance's side hands on a grenade. Vengeance's hand lashed out but Oni Lee was already teleporting away.

Oni Lee was incredibly fast, teleporting back and forth around Vengeance, but somehow the grenades he dropped were always tossed away in the direction of Lung with sudden gusts of wind. With Stormtiger and Cricket's senses Vengeance always knew exactly where Oni Lee was.

The explosions began. Lisa dove for the floor, knowing that the best way to avoid shrapnel was to present as little of herself to be struck by shrapnel as possible. The sound of the explosions made her ears ring and for a moment she found herself deafened.

Vengeance cried out; as loud as the explosions had been for Lisa they had to be infinitely louder with Crickents enhanced hearing. Oni Lee took advantage of her sudden motionlessness to create three clones that lunged forward trying to stab her.

Vengeance's confusion lasted for only a moment. Her hand lashed out again, and again Oni Lee teleported away. The other clones vanished in an explosion of ash. This time, though, there was a small pin in Vengeance's hand.

Oni Lee stared at the pin for a moment before the grenade at his waist exploded. He was thrown back against a wall, but before he could slump to the floor Vengeance was there, plunging a hand into his wound.

Oni Lee gave a scream of pain, and then his body disintegrated, but not in his usual cloud of ash.

Vengeance stopped suddenly, looking horrified.

Tattletale's power suggested an answer. The real Oni Lee was long dead, his power having killed him moments after he'd created his first clone. The power had been all that was holding him together, and each iteration lost a little more of who he was.

There was no continuity of consciousness and using his power was essentially suicide. The world wouldn't know the difference but the original would be as dead as if he'd been shot in the head.

Once Vengeance had stolen his power there was nothing left to hold him together.

Oni Lee's power was the one ability Taylor could never use because it was tantamount to committing suicide.

The pause was enough time for Spitfire to spew liquid fire on Vengeance, still crouched where Oni Lee had fallen. The fire was hot enough that Tattletale could feel it from all the way across the room. It sprayed around Vengeance, and the wall behind her suddenly caught fire.

The grenades had already blown out the front windows and even Lung looked a little stunned. Most of Faultline's crew had been protected from the blasts by Greek columns that had somehow appeared out of nowhere.

Labyrinth's power let her bring parts of other dimensions into the world, Lisa guessed. As she clumsily rose to her feet she noted that her calf was bleeding. There wasn't anything she could do about it now. They had to get out before things escalated even worse.

Othalla was touching Alabaster on the shoulder, presumably empowering him somehow.

Faultline's crew was heading for the door and Lung was standing, a look of rage on his face. He was bloody and shrapnel was sticking out of his chest. He grabbed the table behind him and threw it behind him in a rage. The front wall of the restaurant exploded outward as the heavy table disintegrated as it went through.

"Go, Go, Go," Tattletale muttered to the others. They scrambled to their feet, heading for the door to the kitchen even as Grue's darkness covered their retreat.

Tattletale had a sudden uneasy feeling in her stomach as the warm, inviting darkness washed over her. What if Taylor lost control and came after them? With Cricket and Stormtiger's powers Grue's darkness wouldn't be any protection at all.

She was glad she'd made Bitch stay behind. She might have tried to attack, and that would have just gotten them all hurt.

Hand on the wall, she started as she felt a hand on her shoulder. It was Grue, her power told her, and she relaxed as he led her toward the back of the restaurant.

Every step felt like a mile, and not being able to see what was happening made her feel panicked. She could hear screams and the sound of wood breaking.

The sounds of Hookwolf's blades cutting into flesh sickened her. As frightening as Lung had been he wouldn't last long with as much exposed flesh as he had. Taylor had the fighting experience of two of the Empire's best pit fighters, while Lung had never really had to be an expert at fighting, depending on brute strength and power to win the day.

Today he was facing someone who had even more power than he did, someone who was getting stronger for every person who went down before her.

Despite her bravado in contacting Taylor, Lisa had never seen her in action before the day of the kidnapping. What she was now was much more terrifying, possibly because she no longer had to hold back to protect an identity or onlookers.

The darkness was suddenly gone and they were in a kitchen. Tattletale winced as her powers told her things about the hygiene of the kitchen that she'd rather not know. She'd have vowed never to eat here again, but she doubted that there would be much of a restaurant left after this was all done anyway. The structural damage the place had received had to be tremendous, and at least one wall was on fire.

Being a villain meeting place had been profitable for the owners, but Lisa hoped they'd kept their insurance up to date. At the rate things were going the businesses to both sides of the restaurant were likely going to be either damaged or destroyed.

"Go!" Grue shouted as they pushed the servers ahead of them headed for the alleyway in the back.

It was getting hotter and hotter in the restaurant, enough that Tattletale was coughing from smoke and sweating as the door to the alley opened. She crouched low, recalling that many people died in fires because the loss of visibility and trouble breathing caused them to become disoriented. There was fresher air toward the floor anyway.

The cool, fresh air outside was a relief. Even more of a relief was the sight of Rachel and the dogs. They were already enlarged to monstrous size and Lisa had never felt more relieved to see them.

There was an explosion from inside and Lisa felt intense heat on her back. She sprinted toward the dogs and she felt something liquid squelching in her shoe.

She was probably going to need to get that looked at, sooner than later. As she mounted the dog she reached down to try to put pressure on the wound with her hand. She suppressed a scream as it was suddenly painful.

"Go," Brian shouted as they mounted the dogs as quickly as they were able.

She could feel the muscles in the dog's haunches tensing to move when the back of the restaurant exploded outward. They were trapped.

Where Vengeance had been there was now a tornado of fire.

The world was shifting around them, altering into a hellish landscape. They were being trapped in one of Labyrinth's worlds with Vengeance and Gregor the Snail, Newter and Alabaster.

Taylor wouldn't want any of their powers for obvious reasons and so she had to fight them in a more conventional way.

She was moving slower now than she had before, limping, and there was blood coming out of her ears. She'd obviously been wounded in a way that Lisa couldn't see.

Blades erupted from the ground lifting Alabaster into the air. The invulnerability Othala had granted was still in effect, and Alabaster rolled off the blades and landed on the pavement with a catlike agility. He rushed confidently into the tornado of flames, a short blade in his hand lashing out repeatedly until it began to melt.

It was an impressive attempt, but a moment later the invulnerability faded and his skin began to blacken and char. Lisa suddenly smelled burned pork as Alabaster stumbled away and fell to the ground dead.

Seconds later he was completely restored and springing back into action. His power left him immune to pain and with the confidence that nothing would kill him, he was fearless in trying to attack or at least slow Vengeance down.

Unfortunately for him, he wasn't an actual Brute and Vengeance was. Nothing he did had much of an effect other than stalling Vengeance. However, considering that Vengeance was continuing to slow down, it wasn't entirely fruitless.

Something was affecting Taylor, Lisa realized. She looked like an elephant who'd been a sedative and was trying to keep awake. Her movements were getting sloppy and less precise. She was actually swaying a little, even though the fires and winds around her hadn't abated.

Gregor tried to spit a foam at the tornado. Lisa's power told her the foam was fire retardant.

It vanished in the wind, splattering against the brick wall of the building behind the restaurant. The restaurant itself was now clearly on fire, and the smoke was bad enough that it was making Lisa cough from her position at the end of the alley.

Newter couldn't get close enough to Vengeance to hit him with his paralytic skin secretions. He'd already done so once, Lisa realized suddenly, and Taylor was having to counteract the chemicals in her system on the fly.

She was slowing down though; the chemicals in her system were overwhelming her biokinisis.

"Are we going to fight?" Bitch asked. It was a typical question for her; Lisa had never been sure if her power had created her unusual mindset or simply augmented something pre-existing. She thought like a dog. In her mind fighting and running were the only two options other than surrender and showing the belly.

"Against _that_?" Lisa asked.

While Taylor had promised to try not to hurt her comrades she was hurt now and if she was attacked Lisa wasn't sure what she would do. The last things she needed was to have her comrades killed or depowered because they rushed impulsively into a battle they couldn't win.

Worse, if they somehow did win through some miracle, Lisa wouldn't have Taylor to help free her from Coil. With the other gangs gutted, Coil was going to have an iron hold on the city and he was even less likely to let Lisa go on his own.

"Are we going to let it pick us off?" Grue demanded.

"It'll burn Rachel's dogs to death before they even get to it," Lisa said urgently. "And the rest of us won't do any better."

"I can," Regent said. His normal look of boredom was gone and he was staring intently at the tableau in front of him.

Vengeance stumbled suddenly, her leg twitching. She turned and for a moment his face appeared out of the whirlwind to glare at them.

Spikes appeared from the ground again, impaling Alabaster. Alabaster twitched as his body repaired itself. He pulled himself off the metal spears jutting from the ground and rushed toward Vengeance.

He was thrown by the fiery winds to the side, to smash into the wall of the burning restaurant. Somehow part of the restaurant was in the hellish subdiminsion they were in. The remnants of the wall collapsed on him, too heavy for him to move even as his power healed him.

Vengeance suddenly began to grow larger, seven feet, eight feet, ten. She grabbed Gregor by the head and shook him. His unique biology made him tougher than a normal person, but Lisa wasn't sure Taylor knew that or if she even cared.

With her mind being dulled by the drugs in her system she was going to be even more dangerous and less in control than usual.

There was a scream and the landscape around them suddenly collapsed. Apparently Labyrinth was worried about Gregor.

A moment later they heard the sounds of a familiar motorcycle in the distance. Vengeance tossed Gregor against a brick wall and stumbled. Whatever Newter secreted was apparently very powerful. Vengeance stumbled and fell to one knee. The fire and the wind surrounding her vanished suddenly and Newter lunged forward, trying to finish the job he had begun in sedating her.

Before he could reach her, Vengeance was gone.

The sudden silence was deafening. The only sounds were the cracking of the fire as the restaurant burned and the sounds of Alabaster struggling to get out from under several hundred pounds of roofing shingles.

"We need to get out before he gets back or before the PRT gets here," Lisa said.

Grue nodded shortly, and a moment later their dogs were sprinting past the two Case 53s and the spikes which had erupted from the floor of the alleyway.

"Lucky break," Grue muttered as they rushed down the street.

As Lisa heard the sounds of sirens blasting from behind her and saw the fire on the horizon to their back, she could only hope it was worth it.

* * *

"You knew," Coil said.

They were back in his base, and one of his mercenaries was attending to Lisa's leg. She felt a little woozy despite the fact that she'd only been given a local anesthetic. She probably didn't need to give blood anytime soon.

Lisa shook her head. "I knew something was off about Stormtiger, but she's able to control her body well enough that it spoofed my power."

She was lying of course; Taylor wasn't that good, at least not yet. Looking at Coil she could tell that he didn't quite believe her. Despite that, he seemed to be in a good mood.

The fact that most of his rivals had vanished in a single night was probably part of that.

"You should be happy, anyway," she continued. "She just decapitated every other gang in the city. Without leadership it ought to be easy to snap up control just like you wanted."

Coil scowled. With her powers she could tell he was doing so even under the mask.

"It seems...too easy."

"Easy is the best," Lisa said reassuringly. "With all of this, the only thing left to worry about is the unpowered gang members and the PRT...and without Capes to oppose them I'm betting the PRT will be making a major push to mop up the gangs."

"Nature abhors a vacuum," Coil said. "It won't be long before others move in."

"That's why you have to strike now, while the iron is hot. You'll have a leg up on any upstarts who come looking for territory."

"And what do you get out of all of this?"

Lisa grinned. "A rising tide rises all boats. I expect that being a valuable agent in the number one gang in Brockton Bay ought to have its own rewards."

He looked at her suspiciously, then sighed.

"I should question you more, but it all worked out for the best," he said. "Although if I discover that you turned her against me you won't have a chance to betray me again."

Lisa shook her head. "I knew it was a body double. Even if I had set her onto all of them you'd have been fine."

"Getting a reputation as someone who would break truce is a good way to get a bullet to the head," he said. "Or worse."

He knew. Lisa could tell, but because the outcome had been so favorable he was choosing to ignore it in favor of more pressing matters.

Once word got out that Brockton Bay was a city without Capes there was going to be a feeding frenzy as Capes came from everywhere to take territory and take control of the existing gangs. It was likely that the fighting was going to get worse, not better as people flocked to one group or another seeking protection.

Lisa wasn't sure of the casualty count, but she suspected that it wasn't anything Taylor would have wanted.

Presumably Taylor was wherever she'd teleported to sleeping it off. When she woke up it was going to be to a new world. Whatever happened, she was responsible.

Lisa could only hope that she was ready to accept responsibility for the people who were going to die before this was all over. The last thing she needed was for Taylor to be crippled with guilt. After all, she still had to eliminate Coil, and she was going to need a clear mind for that.

Once Taylor did, the Undersiders would be the last gang in Brockton Bay. That had possibilities, assuming Lisa could get Taylor to play ball.

After all, how hard would it be to convince her?


	34. Interrogation 2

Going to school the next morning was nerve wracking. I'd finally slept off whatever unholy concoction Newter had used on me and I was slowly adjusting to my new powers. Lung's power was the one that worried me the most.

I hadn't had much of a choice about taking it. Not only would a regular fight between us have quickly grown untenable, but leaving him with his power would have left the ABB as the only remaining villain group in power, something I wasn't about to allow.

Feeling Squealer's power whispering in the back of my mind was annoying. Only now was I remembering why I'd been avoiding taking the powers of Tinkers. They spent all their time building things, and from what I heard they sometimes went into fugue states while they were doing it. The thought of losing that much control over my actions was terrifying, especially considering the power I had now.

I had the power of twenty different capes, although one was useless to me. Oni Lee's power horrified me on a deep level. What was worse was that I was fairly certain that he hadn't realized what he was doing over the years. How many times had he committed suicide? Thousands? Each clone had been its own, unique person and each had unknowingly thrown its life away thinking that it was simply teleporting.

Tattletale had been kind enough to call me and warn me about it. I was thankful that I hadn't had cause to use it during the battle the night before. I'd had so many new powers that it had been getting harder and harder to choose which ones to use and so I'd mostly fallen back on the ones I knew better.

I wondered how my clone would have responded to the knowledge that it was less than a day old, a simple copy that might not have had a soul.

According to Tattletale small errors accumulated in the cloning process so that Oni Lee had been losing more and more of himself during each iteration. The horror of that was almost as bad. Losing my emotions and memories would have been almost as bad as just dying.

Faultline's crew had gotten away injured but intact. I wouldn't want most of their powers anyway, given that they would leave me unable to live a normal life and with the PRT at my door.

As I stepped through the doors of the school I could see people staring at me and whispering. The video of my abduction had obviously circulated even before the news of the gangs' collective implosion last night.

I'd only missed two school days, but I could see that the school was curiously empty. None of the Empire or ABB kids had showed up for class. Everyone else seemed anxious and confused. With the leaders of the gang gone, no one knew what to expect.

Hearing the whispers of my classmates with my new abilities only made it worse. Apparently the PRT had rounded up the remaining depowered members of the gangs, although there were several dead. I'd seen Crusader and Victor killed by the grenades I'd directed as they'd been trying to run for the front of the restaurant.

The restaurant itself was a complete loss, as were the buildings to either side of it.

I had to remind myself to free Stormtiger from the literal hole I'd dropped him in. I'd left him a little water but food and waste disposal was probably going to be a problem sooner than later.

Getting through the first two periods, I was surprised that the call to Principal Blackwell's office didn't come until the third.

Everyone stared at me expectantly as I grabbed my bag and rose from my seat.

As I walked down the hallway toward the office, I forced my heart rate to slow and my breathing to calm. I wasn't sure if Lung's powers was even affected by these things; it was possible that conflict alone was all that it had taken to turn him into a flying rage monster.

I suspected that I was about to be enraged too, so I had to keep my emotions in check all I could.

The secretary ushered me into the office with wide eyes.

Armsmaster and Miss Militia were already waiting for me, along with Principal Blackwell. I felt the first hint of irritation and knew I was going to have to do a better job of controlling myself if I was going to get through this.

"Taylor, we've all been concerned about you," Miss Blackwell began.

The fact that she was here in this office at all was enough to enrage me. There had been a time when I'd thought the PRT investigation would cost her her job, but here she was back in her seat looking almost smug.

Part of me wanted to grow claws and literally rip the face of her skull. The scary thing was that I was fully capable of doing it and fast enough that neither of the Capes in the room would have been able to stop me, although they'd have attempted to punish me for it afterward.

Had she been concerned about me when I was pulled screaming from a locker full of filth? Where had her concern been for a year and a half when I was repeatedly abused?

I felt my resentment grow, and I realized suddenly that it had been a mistake to even come here. I had a long history with Blackwell, and the only people who'd be worse candidates for me to face would have been the trio.

"I got out ok," I forced myself to say, even if my tone sounded sullen.

"We're interested in knowing your whereabouts for the past few days," Armsmaster said. "It's possible that you or your father may be in danger."

"I heard that the Empire lost all it's Capes," I said. As I saw him and Miss Militia glace at each other, I said, "It's all everybody at school could talk about...how a single Cape did more to clean up the town in a single night than the PRT did for years."

I could see Armsmaster bristle even though Miss Militia seemed to have better self control.

"That...creature caused a million dollars in damage to businesses that the Bay desperately needs," Armsmaster's voice sounded as though he took the whole thing as a personal offense.

I'd have taken his words more seriously if I didn't know that there had been fights the PRT had been involved in that had caused for more damage to far less effect. The survivors could rebuild, but it would be a lot easier in a stable Bay where people weren't being forced to give protection money all the time.

Besides, the Bay needed a liquor store and a run down dress store?

Now that I thought about it, setting fire to a liquor store probably hadn't been my finest hour. I hadn't been particularly cognizant toward the end and I'd jumped to the mirror universe before I'd been caught but well before the building next door had exploded into flames.

"You seem to approve of Vengeance's actions," Miss Militia said. "Do you have a relationship with him?"

I froze and glanced at Armsmaster, who had leaned forward expectantly. I imagined that whatever he was using as a lie detector was working at full capacity.

"What are you trying to say?" I asked. "Am I being accused of something...again, when I'm clearly the victim here? My Dad and I have had to be in hiding for the past few days because the Protectorate was unable to do their damn job."

"Taylor," Miss Blackwell said.

She was only using my first name and acting chummy because of the two heroes. I could feel my heart speeding up as rage began to build in my belly. I struggled with biokinisis to force my teeth to remain as they were and my eyes not to change, but it was a downhill battle.

"Interrogating me here without my father is an intimidation attempt," I said. I nodded toward Blackwell. "It's a Blackwell favorite. She's even let Emma bring her lawyer father here while I've been by myself. I've been bullied enough."

I stood up and stepped toward the door.

"We have reason to believe that you and your father are likely to be in danger," Miss Militia said.

I didn't turn around, simply standing with my hands on the doorknob. My teeth had grown into fangs beyond my control and I knew I had to get out before things really got out of control.

It wasn't enough to affect my speech yet.

"You think they're going to come after me for bait for that monster again?" I asked. "Now that they don't have any more Capes?"

I laughed mirthlessly. "Even Neo Nazis aren't that stupid. If Vengeance is not protecting me, then all kidnapping me will get them is bad publicity. If he is, then they'll get death. They've got bigger things to worry about than me."

With that I stepped out of the office, keeping my face carefully averted from the secretary. She'd out me as a parahuman in an instant. She'd never been my greatest fan.

I could stall the PRT, but it was only a matter of time now.

Sooner or later they would corner me into a fight, and I had to plan out how I was going to go against them. I didn't want to steal powers from heroes, but I would if they forced me.

I rushed toward a bathroom where I entered a stall and closed the door behind me. It was during class so hopefully none of the girls who'd bullied me would follow me here; if they did they wouldn't like what they found.

The winds carried the sounds of Armsmaster's and Miss Militia's discussion to me, even though they'd apparently left the school and were standing out in front of it.

"She's hiding something," Armsmaster said.

"Unless we have proof are you willing to force her and her father to come in?" Miss Militia asked. "Because if she is him, or if her father is we'd be facing a single cape with the powers of twenty, one who is angry at us."

I was going to have to make sure my father was seen in Vengeance's presence at some point, just in case some twitchy PRT agent put a bullet in his head. If they did that, given Lung's power, I suspect I really would end up as a villain.

With my powers now I could probably cause almost as much damage to the town as an Endbringer.

"If she is innocent she should want to come in to be tested," Armsmaster said, his voice irritated.

"That's the kind of justification my home country used to oppress tens of thousands," Miss Militia said. "Guilty until proven innocent. We'll simply have to find a better way to approach them."

"Probably be better to table it for a while," Armsmaster said. "We're going to have our hands full for the next few days."

"Let's discuss this somewhere else," Miss Militia said. "If she really is Vengeance then she has at least two Capes with enhanced hearing and she might be listening to everything we say."

Armsmaster grunted.

A moment later I heard the sound of his motorcycle roar to life. There was something about the sound of it that bothered me.

I looked down and discovered that I'd pulled a notebook out of my bag without realizing it and had been doodling designs. The problem with Armsmaster's motorcycle was that it wasn't loud enough. Plus, it was too limited.

With a simple device it would be possible to change the direction of gravity, in which case it would be possible to ride up the sides of buildings. It might even be possible to add a teleportation device to it, although it wouldn't be safe for humans to use. You'd be able to summon the vehicle from a set point and send it back.

I cursed as my hand scribbled faster. The urge to go out and start building right now was almost uncontrollable. It was even overwhelming the dragon rage; my teeth were going back to normal finally.

The problem with the urge was that I didn't have a lab or even a garage to work from. I didn't want to spend the time, but I could tell that sooner or later I was going to have to do it.

I would be able to use my flames on it without causing it to explode; the same thing that had allowed my motorcycle leathers to be treated as part of my body would extend far enough to cover a motorcycle. It might not work with something the size of a car, although then again it might.

Forcing myself to put my notebook away, I sighed as I rose to my feet. I still had to get through the rest of the school day, and I could only hope that Madison wasn't stupid enough to start something; I doubted that she'd enjoy what would happen if she did.

* * *

As I walked home that night I grimaced at the oil under my fingers. I'd found an abandoned garage and I'd spent much of the day at a salvage yard buying parts for the motorcycle I was planning to create. Unfortunately none of my powers were designed to make building any quicker, and so I'd barely gotten anything done.

It was going to take time, time I wasn't sure I had. I still had to find Gabe and confront him, and even with the powers I had I was anxious. His telekinisis was powerful and would be difficult to beat although I had some ideas about how to counter it.

The Protectorate was another concern. I wouldn't be able to put them off forever, and sooner or later they were going to come for me.

Leviathan was the even looming on the horizon. If Gabriel's drawing was precognitive, he was coming, and there was no way of knowing when it would happen. Even with all my powers now I wasn't sure I had a chance of even driving him away much less defeating him.

I could still drown, after all, and nothing I had would defeat a tidal wave containing billions of tons of water. Leviathan could sweep entire cities off the map and I could probably destroy a few blocks, at least when not enhanced by fear.

As I walked down my street I stiffened as I realized that a white van at the end of the street had several people in it.

From the murmurings of the people inside I realized that it was a PRT van sent to watch my house. Presumably they were hoping to see Vengeance arrive or leave.

How stupid could they possibly be. They thought Vengeance could teleport. Why would he need to openly leave the house anyway?

They'd claim they were there to protect us, but I knew better. They were there to _spy_. The more I thought about it the angrier I felt myself getting.

How had Lung controlled this?

How had he not ended up destroying a Starbucks every time a barrista got his name wrong? Every time he was cut off in traffic or had to go to the DMV?

I usually didn't think of villains as having normal lives, but they probably went to the grocery store like everyone else, unless they trusted their flunkies to do the shopping for them.

Maybe Lung had turned into a dragon every time his favorite football team lost and we just hadn't heard about it, or maybe he was just secretly a really chill guy.

In the end I was going to either look up anger management or steal it from someone, and I didn't know anyone who was particularly good at it.

I forced myself not to stomp my way to my door. Them knowing I knew they were there was the last thing I wanted. They'd wonder how I knew, and that might lead them to what I could do.

Putting my key in the lock, I opened the door and stepped inside.

As I set my keys in the bowl by the door, my cell phone rang. It was the one I used in my Gamble identity, so I picked it up.

For a moment, all I heard was sniffing and sobbing.

"Hello?" I asked cautiously.

"Gamble..." It was Crystal's voice on the telephone. She was crying.

"What's wrong?" I asked, alarmed.

She sobbed for another several seconds before she was able to gather herself together enough to answer.

"It's Aunt Carol and Uncle Mark," she said. "Vicki and Amy came home and found them..."

"Yes?" I asked. I wasn't sure where she was going with this but I had an uneasy feeling in my gut. Obviously something terrible had happened and there was only one likely suspect now that I had eliminated almost every other villain in town.

"They found them...like Parian."

I gasped despite myself. I'd gotten busy and hadn't bothered warning the Dallons about the shapeshifting parahuman serial killer roaming the streets.

Protecting myself and my father had been my main priority, enough that I hadn't taken the time to even make a phone call that could have saved people's lives.

"Do you want me to come over?" I asked.

She was silent for a long moment. "Yes."

"I'll be over there as quickly as I can."

As I hung up the phone I realized that I still hadn't replaced my flying gear. Was it wrong that I secretly envied Gabriel for having stolen a genuine flying power along with a ranged energy attack?

There was a lot I could have done with those powers, and it was horrible of me to think that way.

I was going to have to warn everyone, or pretty soon he was going to do the same thing to the heroes in town that I had done to the villains.

It wouldn't be long before Brockton Bay was a ghost town.


	35. Responsible

The Pelham house was completely dark as I approached it. I felt a sense of unease, even though I knew it was possible that most of the family was over at the Dallon house dealing with the police.

Crystal was out of costume sitting on the porch steps, staring at the ground. She didn't look up even as I walked up to her. She looked exhausted, and there were bags under he eyes. The cheerfulness that usually filled her entire frame was completely gone.

"Are you all right?" I asked.

She was silent for several seconds. Finally she looked up at me, and her eyes looked moist.

"It wasn't supposed to be like this," Crystal said. "New Wave was supposed to be something that meant something. After Fleur though..."

She stared back down at the ground and sighed. She looked back up at me.

"You've fought him, right?" she asked. "The monster? The one that killed Parian...Carol...Mark?"

She was staring at me and I winced. The PRT still thought Vengeance and Gabriel were one and the same. Explaining that they weren't was going to lead to a very awkward discussion about why I hadn't warned anyone.

"I've fought both of them," I said. "And I barely got away alive."

"What?" she asked.

"There's two of them out there. Vengeance goes after villains...I think that's the only reason I've kept my powers. The other one is the one that takes the brains."

"I thought he took Shadow Stalker. She's a hero."

"Not in her personal life," I said. "She's done some things...almost killed people. Maybe actually killed people...I don't know. I guess she didn't meet his criteria for being a hero."

Gamble wasn't supposed to know these things but I didn't care. Crystal was hurting and I needed to be there, especially since I was at least a little responsible for what had happened.

"Why haven't you told anyone, then?" she asked. "If you had, maybe it might have gone differently." Her eyes were narrowed as she stared at me with an intensity that made me uncomfortable.

"I just found out recently. I haven't had time..."

It wasn't true, of course, but it was the best lie I could come up with on the spur of the moment. I really needed to get around to draining confidence men or professional politicians of their ability to lie. It would make my life much easier.

"You should have made time," she hissed. "Maybe my family wouldn't be dead!"

Regrets never helped anyone. All beating myself up would do was make me less effective in the long run. I tried to tell myself that even though it didn't feel all that convincing. I already had enough dead people on my soul The fact that I wasn't even completely sure of the death toll from last night much less the total number of people I'd killed was a little disturbing.

"I'm not sure it would have made a difference," I said. "He's strong, and he can take the shape of anyone. Someone like that could pick people off one by one and there wouldn't be much anyone could do."

"So what, we should just give up? Wait for him to come finish us off like a slasher from a movie? They might have had a chance, at least," she said sullenly. "Instead of being slaughtered like veal."

I could understand her anger. After Mom had died I'd wanted to lash out and blame someone...anyone for what had happened. I'd ended up blaming myself of course; after all I'd been on the phone with her when she'd died.

"You can tell the PRT," I said hopefully. "Get them to be on the lookout for him."

This would be perfect. If I could shove the duty of warning them off onto her I could avoid the whole mess of being interrogated by them and having to lie to them. With her not knowing the truth Armsmaster's lie detector wouldn't detect anything unusual.

"They won't believe me," she said. "They'll want a direct confirmation from an original source, not hearsay. You'll have to do it."

I scowled. "I'm not exactly in the PRT's good books right now."

They still wanted to ask questions I wasn't ready or able to answer, beginning with what had happened to Vengeance and ending with whatever proof I had that there were two attackers. I wasn't sure I wouldn't turn into a rage monster if the interrogation got too heated and I still hadn't gotten around to stealing skills from con men and liars in prisons and old folk's homes.

Part of me still hesitated because of the ethics of it. What if I permanently drained someone who was innocent and had been jailed unjustly? If he was later freed he'd have a gaping hole in his life where the skills he'd worked so hard to achieve were just gone.

I wouldn't have minded stealing whatever skills I could have from the Empire capes; they'd committed enough crimes that I could justify almost anything I did to them. There hadn't been time, though.

She sighed and said, "Do you want a drink?"

I hesitated then nodded. I didn't really need a drink, and even if I had I could have regulated my feelings of thirst with biokinisis. But when I'd gone through the pain of losing mom, it had been the little rituals, the return to normality that had comforted me.

If she wanted to play hostess, who was I to stop them.

"I wasn't even supposed to be here," she said. "I was supposed to be back at college, but after the whole thing with Victoria..."

As she walked into the darkened house I stopped at the threshold. My twice enhanced hearing told me that no one was in the house; there was no movement and no heartbeats or breathing.

But the winds brought me a coppery smell. It smelled a little rotten and a little sickening sweet. I wasn't sure what it was, but the farther I stepped into the house the worse it got.

Something was wrong. She wasn't turning on any of the lights, just walking through the darkened house. I switched my eyes to cat's eyes, even though that risked her seeing something amiss if she should turn a light on.

As we approached the kitchen I found myself slowing. The smell was coming from in there.

"Have you been in the house?" I asked uneasily. It would be horrible if she had left her aunt and uncle's dead bodies only to come home to something even worse.

She glanced back at me and stared. "I live here. Of course I've been here."

"No...I mean tonight."

"Why?" she asked.

I stopped and stared at her. There was something off about how she was standing. There was something about the way she was walking that just didn't seem right.

At the edge of my consciousness I felt a subtle sense of anticipation. There were a lot of people in the neighborhood and they were nearby. Mild fear was everywhere.

She turned and said, "It'll be fine, Taylor."

I froze.

Crystal didn't know my real name, which meant that this wasn't her. There was only one other person it could be, and I wasn't sure how he knew my name unless he had thinker abilities like those of Tattletale.

She smirked and said, "Oops." It was an ugly expression on her face, one that reminded me uncannily of Emma.

"Gabriel," I spat. "Why did you call me here? Are you ready for us to fight?"

"I was impressed with what you accomplished last night," she said. "Eating all the villains in town in a single night. A gutsy move. I realized I had to up my game if I was to keep up."

"Is Crystal even alive?" I asked.

She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. She gestured toward the kitchen. "Why don't you go see?"

The coppery smell I'd been smelling had to be the smell of blood. The rotten smell was the smell of decay. I had no idea what made it smell sweet, but it was possible that was what death smelled like. I'd already seen what happened to Parian, I didn't need to see another scene of horror and agony. I found myself wondering if it was only Crystal in there or if the other members of hr family were in there was well. Had he gotten all of New Wave?

I reached out to grab her, but she ducked away. That shouldn't have been possible given how fast I was now, but I had no idea what or how many powers she'd taken. She wasn't moving particularly fast, but she'd somehow anticipated what I was going to do. Maybe a combat precog or some other kind of thinker power.

"I had almost as many powers as you have now before I even came here," she said. The expression on her face looked terrified and she ducked back away from me, her body language completely at odds with the tone of her voice."Now I've got half again as many."

She took a step back and as I lunged forward I felt my arm suddenly explode in pain. I'd been shot...and not with any kind of regular weapons.

"I can control sound," she said. Her face was turned away from the window and she smirked again."Which is why you couldn't hear what was going on outside and they couldn't hear what was going on in here."

"She's trying to kill me!" she screamed suddenly. "She killed my whole family."

She turned and dived for the window, exploding through it even as bullets began to perforate the house. I could hear them now; the PRT had surrounded the house and Miss Militia was calling for my surrender after she'd already shot me.

I dived to the floor and into the mirror universe and I cursed. My arm was healing already, even without my using biokinisis; Lung's power was good for something at least.

The PRT believed there were two parahuman power thieves all right; the problem was that they believed that both of them were me. Undoubtedly he'd planted other evidence at the scene of the crime, and whatever I did to convince them would fall on deaf ears.

They'd think I'd killed Crystal's family and that I'd waited fro Crystal to come home so I could get her too. That probably meant that Crystal's body actually hadn't been in the kitchen. It probably wouldn't turn up until later, probably held on ice to confuse the time of death.

It was like the bullies all over again. I felt my teeth elongating as I expressed my rage by kicking out at the walls of the mirror universe house. By the time I was done the house was gone, torn down to the foundation.

He'd murdered Crystal and possibly all of New Wave, and what was worse, he probably wouldn't keep her form. He'd leave her body somewhere and make it seem like I'd killed her in retaliation.

They had to have been getting suspicious that there were two killers. How he knew that I wasn't sure; maybe he had some kind of thinker power. By deflecting the attention off onto me he kept people from looking at the real threat while he kept eating away at people from the shadows.

The police could be a little myopic; once they had their sights set on a suspect they would sometimes ignore evidence leading to someone else. I had no reason to suspect that the PRT was any different.

I could try to create a fourth identity; I hadn't really put that much effort into the whole Gamble identity. I'd dropped Charon soon enough after I'd gotten the powers to make something different. I wasn't particularly attached to this identity but it burned that he would get away with murder and would blame it on me.

Part of the problem was that I had no way of knowing what powers he had. He could simply look up most of the capes I'd taken; other than the clones the others were all matters of public record. That would give him a leg up on planning against me.

But if he'd really taken the powers of almost twenty people in the other world I would have no way of knowing what he'd taken. Even if the powers weren't as powerful or good as what I had they'd still be dangerous. The ability to control sound for example was very powerful; I'd been so focused on what I was hearing that I had ignored my fear sense.

I'd sensed the mounting anxiety of the people around me but I'd been distracted, assuming my hearing would be enough.

I should probably piece together a list of powers that had been known to be used by him the various attacks he'd made. To find those out I'd need to learn what the PRT knew.

The best person for that was probably Tattletale, who supposedly had inside information from the PRT. She already knew about Gabriel, at least in an abstract way and I was sure she would be willing to help. If she wasn't I'd have to lean on her.

Destroying Coil would probably be the thing she wanted for the information. Considering that he was still a threat to Dad, I wasn't entirely against it. After all, I'd once wanted to be a hero, and no matter what the PRT thought I felt I was.

After all, I was the one who'd cleansed the city. It wouldn't be long before the gangs were no longer a problem. Once that was done, all I had to worry about was Coil, Gabriel, the PRT and Leviathan. If I took care of Gabriel, then the PRT might fall in line. If I fought Leviathan well enough to drive him off that would probably help me with the PRT.

Getting Coil's power would help me in ways that these others hadn't. I needed more thinkers and more strangers...maybe even a master or two to my repertoire. I definitely needed a blaster.

I had to get the word out to some of the heroes. I had an idea or two about how to do that. If the winds could carry sounds to me, they could probably carry sounds to other people. I'd still have to be reasonably close, but I probably could get away before they could do anything, slipping into the mirror universe.

Not explaining the mirror universe had been an unexpected boon. Miss Militia was a good enough shot to shoot the earrings right off my head, and that would trap me much as Labyrinth had whenever she'd done...whatever she'd done with that alternate dimension. If they'd known about it's limitations they'd have been able to figure out the radius I had to go through before I could create another universe, having to drop into the real world each time.

Grabbing hold of a piece of rubble I slid aboard, letting it levitate me. Getting the time to get another flying harness was becoming an annoying difficulty, especially since the PRT was watching us. We wouldn't easily be able to make another trip to Boston, and there wasn't a similar theatrical company in Brockton Bay.

I wouldn't be surprised if the PRT was even going through our mail. Federal judges were known to give incredible leeway to PRT agents, much more than to other branches of the government. It was almost as though parahumans had their own set of laws, which were both advantageous and sometimes the opposite.

As I reached the edge of my range I dropped out of the mirror universe.

I could see the lights of fires in the distance. I counted and I could see at least seven places on the horizon that were lit up bright enough to blot out the stars.

Slipping into the other universe, I sped as quickly as I could. Dad was still hidden in the theater and I wasn't sure how close some of the fires were to there. We should have gotten around to creating those alternative locations I'd planned to find.

I was starting to think that procrastination was my greatest flaw. I kept meaning to do things...visit prisons and nursing homes for skills, scout out new hideouts, tell the PRT that a brain eating serial killer was likely to come and slaughter them all, yet there never seemed enough time in the day to do it all.

Maybe there was something wrong with me when I let getting new powers get in the way of what was important.

It took three more universes before I finally appeared in the theater. To my vast relief it wasn't on fire. Dad was crouched over the portable television and he jerked as I appeared beside him.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"A new Asian Cape has taken over the ABB," Dad said. "And she's bombing the hell out of everything. Apparently there's a new cape leading the Empire too...Gunner or something. Both groups are out fighting each other and the PRT."

I scowled. Maybe assuming that the hundreds of normal people in the gangs were just going to go away when the capes leading them vanished had been a little arrogant. It made me little better than the PRT, assuming that Capes were the only important thing in the world.

Going out to fix this was going to put me in danger. It was possible that the PRT could have a kill order on me as Gamble, and they certainly weren't happy with me as Vengeance. I didn't have time to create a new identity either.

Now that I was back in the real world I could already feel strength flowing into me. Even though this was a relatively deserted part of town at this time of night people were afraid.

I was going to have to be very careful.

"We should get you out of town," I said. "Maybe you should go see Gram."

"And leave you behind?"

"I've got Lung's regeneration, some random guys biokinisis, Hookwolf's and Kaiser's armor. I'm fast enough to dodge bullets and I can use the winds to deflect them. If all else fails I can slip away into the other universe to escape. You are a lot squishier than I am."

"You have been wanting to get that flying harness from Boston," he said. "Maybe I can pick up a few more things while I'm at it."

"They're probably not watching the car now," I said. "If I get you to the edge of town I'll give you five thousand dollars and you can buy what you like."

He nodded.

I stared sightlessly at the blank wall before me. In the distance I could hear the sounds of more explosions and I couldn't help but feel like some of this had to be my fault. Trying to make the city a better place was harder than I'd thought.

Tonight I was going to have to be on my game; hopefully I'd be able to control the part of Lung so that I didn't create more destruction than I averted. The last thing I needed to do was to burn down a quarter of the city while I was trying to save it.

Tonight there was going to be a reckoning.


	36. Azrael

Huddling in between two cars, Jacob wondered what he'd been thinking moving to Brockton Bay. Being a Jew in a city with one of the largest Neo Nazi organizations in the country had already been a risky proposition. Worse had been the numbers of parahumans, which meant that fights were endemic, not just between people with powers but between the gangs as well.

This was beyond anything he'd ever seen. Usually the gangs kept their violence mostly to themselves, but it was as if the gloves were now off. Instead of fists and knives they were using bullets.

He held his son Joseph close to him. He could feel his son trembling with fear and he felt himself getting angry. He felt useless being unable to protect his family.

Blood was leaking from his shoulder and he felt himself growing cold. It wasn't supposed to end this way. There was so much he still had to do.

Suddenly he heard the sounds of screaming. The gunfire intensified for a few moments and then suddenly stopped.

Fearfully he glanced under the car closest to the Empire thugs. He blinked as he saw bodies on the ground.

He started as he saw a figure out of nightmares step around the corner, head flaming and wearing some kind of metallic version of a motorcycle outfit. It stared at him for a moment and he clutched his son tighter to him. He closed his eyes only to feel a hand on his shoulder.

" _YOU ARE INNOCENT_ ," a voice from the grave said. " _LIVE AND SPREAD THE WORD."_

A hand on his shoulder and he suddenly felt warmth and a blessed freedom from pain. He opened his eyes and the figure was already gone. The bleeding had stopped on his shoulder and he could suddenly use his arm again. If felt better every second.

"Who was that, daddy?" His son asked.

Apparently he'd been looking even though Jacob had told him not to.

"Azrael," he murmured. "The angel of death. He did not choose us this day."

It would have helped if he had said exactly which word he wanted spread. The problem with being cryptic was that it was easy to be misinterpreted.

As he carefully stood, he saw PRT vans come screaming around the corner. He held up his hands, thankful for the sudden freedom of movement in his shoulder. Having been given the gift of life the last thing he needed was to be shot against by trigger happy, jittery law officers.

The grilling he would receive from the PRT lasted longer than the battle that had almost cost him his life.

Flames were everywhere and William Tan knew that he was done for. Standing by the window he considered jumping. Even though it would be a similarly painful death a fall would be better than burning.

He saw a figure below with a burning head. It stared up at him and he wondered if it was death itself coming for him. As he climbed onto the ledge he saw it glance around.

It found one of the motorcycles parked out in the front. It did something to the motorcycle, apparently hotwiring it because the moment it mounted it the vehicle roared to life.

The entire vehicle burst into flames and a moment later the figure was roaring toward the edge of the building.

He blinked as he saw it jump and it was riding up the side of the building toward him.

The flames behind him were unbearably hot and he felt his footing slip. A moment later the figure was grabbing him and his arm felt like it was being pulled from it's socket. At the touch of the monster the flames no longer felt painful.

A moment after that they were headed for the ground.

The monster dropped him to the ground and stared at him for a long moment.

"There's others inside," William said.

The monster nodded and said " _SPREAD THE WORD."_

Moments later it was back riding up the side of the building. It crashed through a window that looked like it should have been too small for rider or motorcycle; maybe the rider did something to it because there was a hole in the brickwork where it went in.

Time and time again the monster emerged with his friends and his neighbors. Some had already been badly burned by the flames, but they started healing before William's eyes even as the monster dropped them unceremoniously to the ground.

As the monster brought out the last of them it stared at them, then down at it's motorcycle. Metal began to form on the motorcycle, stylized skulls and stylized flames.

By the time the PRT arrived only the dead remained in the building. At least twenty people owed their lives to the monster. The last he saw of it was as a motorcycle in the sky.

"There's no way to defuse it," Armsmaster said, gritting his teeth. "Not in the time we have. How is the evacuation going?"

"Too slow," Velocity said. "I've been telling as many people as I can, but there's a lot of people too afraid to come to the door. Those who do are trying to gather their possessions. It's not going to happen."

"We've got minutes at the most," Armsmaster said. "Maybe less."

"Hey," Kid Win said. "Is it supposed to be doing that?"

"Shit," Armsmaster stared at the timer which was suddenly moving at ten times the rate it had been. "Robin, get out now. It's been good working with you."

Kid Win stared at him, his expression showing that he knew exactly what was about to happen. There wasn't time to get away even with the Armscycle or Kid Win's hoverboard. Robin might have a chance to get away if he was quick.

The sound of squealing tires at the end of the block drew his attention.

It was Vengeance.

Ordinarily Armsmaster would have prepared to fight him, looked forward to it even. His armor would make losing his powers difficult and he'd always looked forward to challenging himself against the strongest opponents.

Now, though, there wasn't much point.

Vengeance roared toward them, and before Armsmaster could do anything he was leaning down the side of his motorcyle and reaching out to touch the bomb. He, his motorcycle and the bomb disappeared.

A moment later he reappeared, but the bomb was gone.

Armsmaster stared.

A moment after that there was a rumbling that shook the earth and pieces of metal began to materialize all around them. Vengeance swayed in the seat of his motorcycle. He then turned to Armsmaster and said, " _THE BRAIN EATER IS DECIEVING YOU. IT TOOK THE FORM OF CRYSTAL PELHAM TO DIVERT ATTENTION FROM HIS OWN CRIMES. HIS NAME IS GABRIEL AND HE COULD BE ANYONE...EVEN ONE OF YOUR OWN. TRUST NO ONE."_

Before Armsmaster could respond, the motorcycle caught flame and a moment later was riding into the sky.

"What just happened?" Kid Win asked.

Armsmaster wasn't sure himself. He knew he couldn't ignore the warning. Even if it was an attempt to divert attention from the truth it was a lead on the personality of the monster.

"Consider this top secret until we have a chance to look into it," he said. "The same to you Vista."

Vista's voice responded over the coms. "Ten four."

At least she knew how to be professional, despite her small size and young age. He only wished some of the other Wards would follow suit.

When he'd gotten up in the morning, Hans hadn't realized that today was the day he was going to die.

"We're running out of ammo," Piers screamed. "We can't take much more of this."

Regretting joining the Empire was something that was going around a lot lately. At one time they'd been the undisputed rulers of the city. They'd had more Capes than the Protectorate, and the ABB, their only real competition had been small and linked to the power of one subhuman.

Now all that was gone. They still had their money and their weapons, but none of that mattered in the face of a crazy Asian lady who was putting bombs in the heads of Whites and Asians alike.

At least they still had one Cape left, and the way this war was going they were probably going to end up with more from all the horrible experiences people were having.

Firing his AK-47 over the hood of a car, Hans made sure to fire short bursts. The ammo wasn't going to last long as it was without his pulling down on the trigger and spraying at everything. Hans grimaced as he felt a burning along the side of his calf. The engine block of a car made for good protection against bullets in a way that the doors and sides did not, Hollywood nonwithstanding. Some of the subhumans were smart enough to shoot at exposed feet and legs, though.

The roar of a motorcycle in the distance was almost a relieve. Armsmaster would force them to stop, and even a small stint of jail time would be better than being pinned down by a larger force. They were outnumbered three to one by the Asians. Many of them weren't even members of the ABB; they were just victims who had been implanted with bombs and given a gun.

While that meant they couldn't match the Empire for training, numbers were important in a gun fight.

A motorcycle tore down the road. He looked inadvertently at it and he cursed. It wasn't Armsmaster at all. It was the freak with the flaming head.

The monster pulled in between the two groups and the gunfire stuttered to a stop.

" _STOP AND SURRENDER OR BE JUDGED."_

Snarling Hans pointed his AK-47 and forgetting his resolve from moments later, he pulled the trigger and held it. This was the monster who was responsible for it all. This was the monster who had destroyed their chance of taking back their city for the people who actually mattered.

The Asians were firing at it as well. Bullets flew, striking it and it just stood there, letting itself be pounded with bullets for almost a minute.

Hans ran out of bullets almost immediately and his comrades a little later. The Asians lasted much longer, but eventually even their guns stuttered and became silent.

He risked looking over the car again. The monster hadn't budged an inch, although it's face had changed; it's teeth had grown and it's face had become even more terrifying than before.

The monster was looking right at him. " _YOU ARE JUDGED_."

A moment later a chain appeared in the monster's hand. The chain lashed out and it lengthened and kept lengthening until it wrapped around the car he was hiding behind. It almost took his head off.

The Car he was leaning against was yanked away and sent flying through the air to smash on top of the car the Asians were hiding behind. They scattered like the cockroaches they were.

Lengths of chain began to emerge from the monster's hands, flying through the air and wrapping around one person after another until they were all wrapped together.

Hans was the first to realize the problem with this.

"Don't tie us up with these slants! They've all got bombs in their heads; when they blow they'll take us with them."

" _WOULD THAT NOT BE JUSTICE_?" the monster asked, but it stopped and seemed to be considering something.

A moment later it was gone.

Hans began to scream for help, along with the others. He was afraid that no one was going to come.

It was almost ten minutes before the motorcyclist returned. It was the longest ten minutes of Hans life as he was forced to stare at the men who were going to kill him without even meaning to. When they didn't report back to their master she would remote trigger the bombs and kill them all.

Sophia scowled staring at the television. It had all gone to hell since she'd left the street. The city was tearing itself apart and she itched to be out there taking names and beating the gangsters who were terrifying everyone.

Instead, she was stuck in juvie...not even the special juvie for paranormals but ordinary juvie, in with the weak, the norms, the idiots. She still had her fighting skills, so she was doing all right, but it was humiliating.

Not a single one of her teammates had come to see her. As far as they were concerned she'd dropped off the map. Well screw them. She could do better. She'd come back, and when she did she had a list of people that she'd get her revenge on. Hebert was at the top of the list.

Somehow Hebert had set her up. She'd taken what was supposed to be a little object lesson and turned it into a federal case. She hadn't even been hurt all that badly. The Asian boys obviously weren't as dedicated to their work as they had been in the past.

Then Emma. Emma had thrown her under the bus, as had Blackwell, who'd claimed she had no idea what Sophia was doing, the lying bitch. She'd as much as put the stamp of approval on Sophia's little games with Hebert and the others.

The entire Protectorate deserved whatever they got. They'd dropped her like a hot potato the minute she'd done something that didn't fit their pure little public relations game. You had to get dirty if you were going to fight on the streets; as long as they didn't understand that they'd never get anything accomplished.

The monster that was destroying the city had taken down more villains in a single night than the Protectorate had in...ever. As much as she despised it, she hated it as well.

It was unrelenting and powerful, even if it had been a coward in taking her powers without facing her in a real fight. If it hadn't completely screwed her life over she could have even admired it.

Instead she loathed everything she saw about it. She followed it as well as she could with the limited access they had to the outside and she realized she was becoming obsessed with it.

She started as she heard gasps in the day room. She turned and standing in the middle of the room was the monster itself.

Before she could do anything it lunged forward. It grabbed her and suddenly the world shifted around them. All the people vanished as did the lights, until the only light was that coming through a window high on the wall.

The monster grabbed her by the throat; she tried to dodge but it was superhumanly fast and it's hands were like vices.

" _YOU HAVE SOMETHING I NEED,"_ the monster said. It stared at her for the next five minutes, and as much as she struggled she could not get free. She could feel it all leaving her; all the tricks she'd discovered over the years about how to use her power.

The ways she's managed to reach through Hebert's locker and materialize just enough to grab her flute. Tricks she'd never told anyone, that she'd kept in reserve for the day Armsmaster and the others turned on her.

Tricks she'd never gotten to use.

She screamed and she clawed, but the thing may as well have been made of stone for all the good it did.

It stopped after a time and stared at her.

" _I SHOULD TAKE IT ALL,"_ It said. She wasn't sure what it meant until her eyes widened. It meant her other skills...the fighting and the stealth. The only things she had left to her, that made her able to survive as one of the strong instead of one of the weak.

" _WOULD YOU BEG, SOPHIA_?" It asked, still staring at her.

She spit in its face. "I wouldn't beg the likes of you for dirt for my coffin."

" _NO FRIENDS, NO FAMILY...WHO IS THE WORTHLESS ONE NOW, SOPHIA_?" It taunted. " _I WILL DANCE ON YOUR GRAVE AND YOU WILL DIE UNMOURNED."_

The bitterness and anger in its voice denoted a personal grudge. The only ones who hated her that much were the gangbangers, and from what she'd heard it had attacked the gangleaders of all groups equally. The only others were the kids at school that she'd given lessons to, the ones that she'd tried to toughen up.

Of those only one was associated with Vengeance.

"Hebert?" she asked.

The world flickered around them and the monster dropped her in the middle of the rec room floor. All the other girl's had already fled and alarms were blaring everywhere.

The monster stared at her where she had fallen on the floor and it said, " _YOU WILL ALWAYS BE NOTHING SOPHIA, UNLOVED AND ALONE. YOU REAP WHAT YOU SOW_."

It vanished again, and Sophia stared at where it had been. Heber had done this, had stolen her entire life. She'd stolen her powers, her position with the PRT. She'd taken her family and her friends. She'd ruined everything and now she had the best powers of anyone other than Eidolon.

Sophia saw red, and a moment later she found herself on a vast plain between two unimaginable creatures.

"DESTINATION...AGREEMENT..."

The cyclist did return eventually, stepping off the bike and approaching the first of the Asians.

Hans wasn't even sure that the slant spoke English. He simply stared in terror at the monster approaching him.

A touch from the monster and the chains binding that one man fell off. The monster grabbed him and pulled him a all the way across the street.

" _I HAVE GAINED THE SKILLS I NEED_ ," the thing said.

A moment later it plunged its hand into the man's skull, plucking something out of his head. It disappeared and a moment later it reappeared, the object gone.

It repeated the procedure with one Asian after the next. On two occasions it was too late; the sound of an explosion from inside the Asian's head once didn't seem to matter.

It took Hans a moment to realize that the monster had Othalla's power. It was making the Asians invulnerable before it plucked the bombs out.

The second Asian wasn't as lucky. Despite the invulnerability there was a thump and glass began to spread all over the Asian's body, turning him into a glass statue.

The glass spread even to the monster's arm, creeping up to its elbow before it simply snapped its arm off and waited for it to regrow before beginning the process all over again.

It finished and left without a word.

The PRT arrived an hour later. Hans wasn't sure whether to feel relieved or dismayed.

It was going to be a long night for everyone.


	37. Sisters

It was the night that never seemed to end.

Rescuing people had been easy at first, but even with my array of powers exhaustion began to set in after the first few hours. I didn't have to simply beat multiple gangs fighting each other and the police, but I had to dodge PRT patrols.

Despite what I'd told Armsmaster, the PRT still seemed to consider me an enemy. The only thing that saved me was that I could hear things from a tremendous distance if I chose to let the wind enhance Cricket's already amazing hearing. Being able to sense the PRT agents fear was also helpful; while I couldn't differentiate one person's fear from another, they tended to be less afraid than most of the gang members and they traveled in clumps.

The bombs in people's heads were getting harder and harder to remove as well. I'd considered stealing the skills of a surgeon but hadn't, reasoning that the city needed every surgeon that it could get tonight.

Burning buildings, people trapped in cars, poisonous gasses exploding and killing everyone in an entire building...the horrors I saw seemed endless. The more I saw the angrier I got.

This had to stop, and it wasn't going to happen until Bakuda was ended.

Tattletale had promised to call me the moment she pinpointed her location. It didn't seem to be enough. I'd interrogated some of the victims but no one was able to tell me where the lab they had been implanted in was found. They'd been led there with bags over their heads and led out the same way.

I'd tried giving their time estimates to Tattletale in hope that she'd be able to triangulate the area or something, but she'd told me that people's estimates of time were deeply flawed and couldn't be trusted. She was appreciative of the information though and told me that every bit of new information could make the difference between the city having to go through hell for another several hours or freedom.

I'd even met with her and had been given a tinkertech earpiece and bodycam that she could use to try to get as much as she could in real time. Apparently Coil knew she was working with me, if not why and he approved of her doing this.

There wasn't any point in ruling over a smoldering crater of a city after all. If he was to have a city to rule he needed her shut down as badly as I did.

Having Dad safely out of town was the only thing that let me get through it all. I was able to focus on people instead of worrying that our house was going to be bombed or that the theater was going to catch on fire because an Asian with a bomb in his head wandered too close.

Maybe in a different world this all would have been easier, but I pushed through the exhaustion to do as much as I could.

There were times when I failed, when people were caught up in areas of null time that I realized would have trapped me as easily as someone else. Once I had to tear off my own arm to escape an expanding sphere of null time. Only Cricket's reflexes and the fact that I was expecting it had let me escape.

I wished that my biokinisis was faster, so I could create an arm twenty feet long to use on people. It would have been disturbing, but much safer for me.

As it was I lost count of the times I was genuinely at risk of my life. I couldn't help but wonder what Dad would do if I was trapped in an area of dead time, or pulled into a black hole, or ejected out into the blackness of space through a portal.

Admitting that I was his daughter would only get him murdered by gang members resentful of losing their place in the world. I wasn't even certain the PRT would bother to save him; they certainly didn't seem to do anything from altruism.

It was almost three in the morning, and I was reaching the end of my strength when my luck finally ran out.

The bomb in the kid's head exploded and I was just a tad slower than I had been, probably from exhaustion. Instead of just an arm it got a good portion of my torso, and I was forced to send a piece of metal up to cut me almost in two even as I yanked telekinetically on my armor to pull me out of harm's way.

I felt groggy as I realized that my heart and my lungs were exposed to the open air. Even with Lung's regeneration this was going to take a while, time in which I was going to be vulnerable to anyone coming after me.

Unconsciousness overtook me, and when I awoke I was in the air.

"If you steal my powers we'll both drop to our deaths," the girl in the white gown said. My mind was fuzzy, probably from exhaustion and all the damage I'd taken. I doubted even Lung could have survived being cut in half, but the fear was empowering his regeneration as well as it was everything else.

I wasn't even sure where my body was going to get the mass to regenerate the missing half of my body. It wasn't like I'd had that much excess mass in the first place. I wondered if I was going to regain my body only to look like an emaciated skeleton.

Unfortunately I'd been doing everything I could all night to reduce the fear, and I'd been making a difference.

My head lolled as I stared at her.

She had bags under her eyes and she looked like she hadn't slept in days. I couldn't blame her, considering everything she'd been through. I had to wonder just how much of what Gabriel had told me was true. Was her entire family dead except for Amy or was it all a bluff?

I couldn't see him giving up the buffet that a group of capes with a publicly known house address would be. It would have been easy for him. All he'd have to do was kill one, then take the rest of the family one by one as they returned home, never expecting betrayal from the people that they loved.

"Glory gurl?"

My mouth wouldn't seem to work right and my brain seemed to be misfiring. I had to be in shock. I couldn't even concentrate enough to use my biokinisis to speed my healing.

I wondered whether I'd die if Glory Girl took me too far from the fear which was empowering me, or whether I had healed enough already for it not to matter.

"I wouldn't be doing this, but Amy insisted.," she said. "I've lost almost everything I've ever loved and I can't help but blame you a little bit for it."

Did she know I was the one who had caused her to murder that guy? I wasn't sure how else I'd offended her.

"My sister lied when she said she didn't look at your brain the first time. She lies like that a lot."

Amy Dallon knew then. She'd known all along who I was and she hadn't told the Protectorate. Why?

"Why?" I asked, my voice slurring still.

"She doesn't like people knowing she can do brains. She says it's too much power, that she'd be tempted to go too far." She was silent for a moment. "We've been talking a lot the last couple of days."

"No...why me?"

"She's got a use for you," Glory Girl said. She looked down at me with an expression of contempt. "I'd just as soon drop you, but she says you're our only hope."

I would have said something else, but I blacked out again.

When I woke I felt much better. I felt something touching my arm, and I felt warm and whole. She was touching something else with her other hand; it took me a moment to realize that it was a large dead dog.

I'd heard somewhere that she needed biomass if she was to replace parts. It was a little horrifying to realize that part of me was going to be made of roadkill, but it was better than being an emaciated skeleton for real.

"You didn't come back to see me," Amy said neutrally.

"I didn't think you knew," I said. "And after I got Hookwolf I didn't think you wouldn't."

She was silent for a long moment. "I'm still working on your legs, so don't look down."

I looked down at the stumps of my legs; the toes at the end of the stumps were barely nubs. I tried to whittle them.

"I've got biokinisis," I said. "Not as fast as what you've got and probably not as powerful, but I'm used to disgusting things."

There wasn't much left of the dog; at this point it was mostly skin and fur.

"I'm going to have to use some of your body fat to finish up," she said. "I'm sorry."

I could feel what she was doing now, and it was amazing. The changes had never gone so smoothly and seamlessly for me; it had always been a lot of trial and error and had required real effort. This was flawless and amazing.

The urge to reach out and take her power was almost overwhelming. Maybe if I could take her power some of that understanding could be applied to my own power. I'd love to have the ability to make changes that quickly, with that kind of intuitive understanding.

"You wouldn't want it," she said without looking up. "My power I mean."

I realized that my hand was just an inch from her wrist.

"It's more of a burden than a blessing," she said. "Everyone always wanting something from you, your time never your own. Feeling every germ on everything you touch and you eat...I could tell you things about the restaurants in town that would make you sick."

"I've seen you eating at those places, I said, letting my hand drop.

"I kill all the harmful bacteria in everything I eat, and on what Vicky eats, at least when she bothers to let me."

"Why are you saving me?" I asked. My mind was clearing now, and I still couldn't understand.

"You're the only one who can fight him," she said. She stared off into the distance. "He killed the others one by one and hid them in the back of the house. We didn't realize who he was at first; he was in the shape of Crystal. I knew as soon as I brushed by her though."

She was silent for a long moment. "People have their own unique germs, you know. It comes in a cloud that covers everybody like an aura. It's as unique as a fingerprint. I tried to make him sick, to change him, but something about him reverts the changes almost as quickly as I made them. If Vicky hadn't gotten me out of there..."

I nodded.

"Still," I said. "Why me?"

"You're like him," she said. "Except you don't kill...mostly. You target villains...you were Crystal's friend. Most importantly, there's no one in the Bay that has even remotely the power they need to face him. You are the closest we have to Eidolon."

"I can't find him," I admitted. "I've got the powers from twenty capes, but no thinkers, no precogs or super senses other than hearing. I can smell things because the wind brings them to me, but it doesn't make me any better at identifying scents than a regular person."

"Then you are going to have to travel," she said. "Get allies who can do the thinking for you. If you don't stop him he's going to be the end of it for everyone we care about."

"I don't really know the Wards," I said. "And I think the Protectorate has been trying to shoot me in the head.."

She scowled. "Then do it because he's a serial killing ass. The only reason he doesn't go after normal people is because they don't have anything to offer. What do you think he would have done with Victor's power?"

"He'd be draining everyone in the city who was unusually good at something...even if it was something relatively useless to him like singing."

"He collects powers and he'd collect skills the same way," she said. She finally lifted her hand from my leg, which surprisingly was back to normal although it was unusually thin. Madison would probably start a rumor that I was doing meth or something when I went back to school unless I was careful to fill out.

"What are you and your sister doing?" I asked. I realized that we were in a warehouse which looked to be abandoned. Everything was dusty.

"We're in hiding," she said. "We can't trust anyone until this is done, so we're going on the run."

"You could go to the PRT," I said.

"If he's smart he's there already," she said. "I'd wake up one morning with my head splattered all over the wall...they made me be part of Parian's autopsy so I know exactly what he does to bodies."

"Do you need money?" I asked.

She shook her head. "Vicky looted a couple of stashhouses once she realized what we needed. We couldn't go home; she's pretty sure the PRT is looking for us."

"Where will you go?" I asked.

"Canada," she said. "It's outside the PRT's purview, and Vicki thinks she can get Dragon to take us in."

"If anyone can figure out a way to identify him it would be her," I admitted. "If you talk to her, do you think you could get her to help me?"

"She's fairly loyal to the PRT," Amy said. "We won't tell her who you are until we're sure she'll help you instead of turning you in."

"Thanks for this," I said.

"I've heard what you've been doing for the city," she said. "The radio isn't talking about anything other than the attacks and the responses from you, the PRT and whatever other independent heroes are left."

"Are there any?" I asked. It'd be good to have some allies.

She shook her head. "I don't know."

I realized that my face was back to normal. "Did you do this?"

"Every since I've been using my abilities for more than just healing I've been feeling better," she admitted. "You know it's possible to turn weeds into plants that are edible and even tasty? I've even made breadfruit."

"I've heard of that," I said.

"Not the kind I made," she said. "The bread is good too, although it's frustrating not being able to cook anything."

"Are you guys sure you don't want to stick around? You have friends here, even if you don't have family."

"We'd end up in foster care, or worse with Aunt Marge," Amy said. She shuddered. "Besides, even if you hid us somewhere how would we know that the person coming back was actually you or just someone wearing your face?"

"You aren't old enough to rent hotel rooms or cars," I said. "Or even get a job. And what about your education?"

"If I still had a mother she'd be able to ask those questions," Amy said acidly. "But I don't. We'll figure something out."

Once they got to Dragon they'd be all right, I guess. They were two of the strongest Capes in the Bay, each in their own way. Short of a visit from the Slaughterhouse Nine or Gabriel himself they ought to be all right.

"If I knew where that Bomber was I could have at least avoided all this," I said, gesturing toward my legs.

"You got a call," Amy said. She held up the communicator I had been using to talk to Tattletale. "Whoever is on the other side of the line seems to know approximately where the bomber is."

I snatched the communicator from her.

Struggling to my feet I swayed for a moment as I got used to my new legs. It was odd to think that my original legs were gone forever, trapped in a void of null time somewhere. It was weird that these weren't really my legs at all, although they eventually would be.

"Are you going to be all right?" I asked.

Glory Girl stepped out of the shadows, scowling. I'd been peripherally aware of her, of course but I'd let her think that she was fooling me because she'd been through enough. Her heartbeat had been obvious to Cricket and Stormtiger's senses. She wasn't wearing her blinding white costume now; instead she was wearing a black hoodie. Amy was dressed much the same.

"I can take care of my sister without any help from you."

I nodded shortly and then began changing my form. I was still a little weak from a lack of mass, but there was a lot that had to be done and not much time to do it. I held out my hand for the communicator and Amy handed it and the earpiece to me.

"Good luck," we both said simultaneously.

Turning, I slipped the earpiece into my ear, and said, "Tattletale, are you there?"

I reached the door to the warehouse and looked back, but they were already gone, presumably having slipped out the back. I hoped they had better luck than they'd been having.

I hoped we all did.

"Where have you been?" she asked immediately. Her voice sounded strained."We've got a situation."

Apparently not.


	38. Bakuda

"What's the problem?" I asked.

I looked around for something I could substitute for my motorcycle. Squealer's power predictably came with the ability to hot wire vehicles, and while I normally would never steal a vehicle from someone, I could at least justify it while I was out saving lives.

"The PRT found out where Bakuda was holed up," Tattletale said. "And they mounted an attack. The problem is that something went wrong and they've all been caught up in an expanding bubble of ...something."

"If it's one of those null time bubbles there isn't anything I can do," I said. "I've tried, but Squealer wasn't that kind of a tinker."

Even the teleportation devices she could create only worked if they were connected to a vehicle of some kind. If I didn't know that everything he made blew up on him, I'd have gone after Leet. I still might take Uber.

"There's...someone here who says there's a good chance you might be able to do something. Apparently it's a bubble not a sphere, whatever that means." Tattletale sounded deeply uncomfortable for some reason, and I had to wonder why.

I also had to wonder why her boss would be letting me help her rescue the Protectorate members. If his plan was to take over the city, wouldn't getting rid of the heroes be the way to start? Or did he think that the national Protectorate would send twice as many heroes if the team was wiped out?

It meant that whatever it was was keeping them in, but they weren't suspended like flies in Amber. Depending on how large the sphere was I might be able to slip through to the mirror universe and rescue them, although that would risk revealing that nature of my power to them.

The easiest thing would be to leave them. After all, fewer heroes around for Gabriel to eat meant an easier fight when we finally had our confrontation. On the other hand, this might be my chance to get the PRT on my side, or at least off my back. The Protectorate members had at least some sway with them and maybe they'd be less trigger happy around my Dad.

I could hear a car weaving down the road two blocks away. The people inside were singling loudly off key and they were throwing something out of windows causing people to scream.

Reaching down I touched a manhole cover. A motion of my fingers and the bolts holding down came off explosively. It floated up and I sat on it.

Using Hookwolf's power I took the form of a something I'd seen once in a Stephen King movie. In the center I was sitting crouched on the manhole cover, but surrounding me was a form that was a thing of nightmares, a sphere with a mouth full of rotating teeth.

A moment later I took flight and soon I could see what was happening. Two drunk Skinheads were throwing bottles filled with flaming liquid at passing Asians.

The moment one of them saw the monster that I had become he screamed and gunned his vehicle. It was a 1969 Impala, not that different from one my own grandfather had once had.

I followed them as they sped away. While Rune's telekinisis was powerful, it wasn't always as quick or maneuverable as I would have liked and at first they pulled ahead.

The fact that I could send clones forward was helpful though. I created a ghost clone in the back seat of the vehicle and a moment later it skidded to a stop. The clone exited the vehicle, the two clowns inside unconscious and being dragged out of the car.

It vanished and I returned to my normal form a moment later. I gave them a contemptuous look. If they'd actually managed to hit anyone I would have done a lot worse to them, but it looked like they had a couple of broken bones in the middle of a neighborhood where they had been attacking people. I suspected that justice would take care of itself.

As I slid into the car, the engine was still running. Squealer's power told me that the vehicle had been maintained in excellent condition, which meant that the two clowns that had been driving it probably hadn't been the original owners.

There were Nazi decorations inside the car, however, so I assumed the car belonged to one of their comrades. I concentrated and metal sprouted covering those decorations. I added a skull to the hood and to the hubcaps.

Kaiser could have done so much more with his power than metal spikes and armor. I wondered why he hadn't. Had it been a lack of imagination or simply a lack of motivation?

Either way, Squealer's power came with the ability to be a preternatural good driver with any vehicle. Her reasons for not using her powers better I understood. Drugs took a terrible toll on aspects of lives, especially intelligence and often creativity.

Flames rose from the sides of the car and it didn't explode. Good; I hadn't been sure but it was better to find out now than later when things were likely to get hairy.

The roar of the engine as I slipped it into gear was soothing, but part of me thought the engine wasn't nearly loud enough. I felt an urge to go under the engine and give it more power, to really make it roar so that everyone would know who I was.

Tinker powers are annoying. It was an annoying itch in the back of my mind that I couldn't scratch because I had other things to do. I had a suspicion that if I picked up other Tinker powers it was only going to get worse.

"You'll have to guide me to it," I murmured to Tattletale.

"No I won't," she said. "Get to the docks and you'll find it easily enough."

I put the car in gear and sped by a police officer by the side of the road. As he turned on his lights I smirked and gave the car an extra telekinetic push.

By the time he'd started I was already gone. Best of all, if he chose to put a warrant out for speeding it would likely go to the owner of the car...or maybe not. Squealer's powers came with knowledge of how to drive, not of traffic laws.

Considering that I hadn't even started driver's ed yet, that was probably one of the things I needed to start remedying.

It wasn't long before I saw what she meant. The buildings on the docks were by and large single story affairs, with the occasional warehouse stretching a story and a half. The glowing purple globe stood five stories tall and according to Tattletale it was slowly growing, disintegrating everything in it's path.

There was a police cordon all around , although the police were keeping well away from the sphere. In the moment I had to observe it looked like the PRT were using regular police agents to help bolster their numbers.

They were just noticing me when I switched over to the mirror universe.

I felt dismayed as I realized that there was a distortion here as well as in the other universe. Had the mirroring effect assumed it was part of the landscape the same as the trees and houses and cars? Or was the effect somehow pandiminsional?

Whatever was going on it didn't look like the same kind of solid barrier that existed in the other world. This looked permeable.

I stopped the car and I got out, leaving it running. As I reached the barrier, I grimaced and I touched it, hoping that it wouldn't simply disintegrate my entire body.

There was resistance, but I could push through. I wasn't sure that whoever I was trying to rescue would have it as easily; after all, I had multiple brutes under my belt.

I got back into my car and I closed my eyes. Metal began to sprout all over the car, armoring it so that it would be able to better push through. It would never ride as fast or as maneuverability again and I found myself regretting that.

Adding spikes helped satisfy Squealer's powers need for a certain aesthetic appeal.

I opened my eyes and I pumped up the flames. Putting the vehicle in reverse I backed up a block. A moment later I switched gears and floored the accelerator.

Passing through the barrier felt like passing through thick mud. It washed over me and I felt time seem to slow for a moment before I came out on the other side. I felt the mirror universe shatter around me as I passed through.

I could see the Protectorate members in front of me; apparently I hadn't lost any of my momentum no matter how it had felt, and so I was forced to use Squealer's enhanced driving skills and Cricket's enhanced agility and speed to force the car into a spin so that I missed all of them.

Armsmaster and Miss Militia were standing there, along with Velocity, Assault and Battery. I didn't see Triumph, but Clockblocker and Vista were there.

Miss Militia suddenly formed a rocket launcher while Armsmaster readied his halberd. The others looked as though they were ready for a fight.

I rolled the car window down slowly as they all stared at me.

Leaning my head out, I said "Come with me if you want to live."

I'd wanted to say that ever since my father had showed me that Earth Aleph movie. Apparently the Protectorate members got the reference although the Wards looked confused.

"Are you here to fight us or steal our powers?" Armsmaster called out.

" _NOT TODAY_ ," I said.

"You can get us out?" Assault asked, staring at my car like it was a miracle. I suppose it did look like something post apocalyptic.

" _YES_ ," I said.

"Can you get us in?" Armsmaster asked.

Apparently there were two layers to the sphere and the Protectorate were trapped between them. The Inner sphere covered an old tenement building, presumably the place where Bakuda had kept her lab.

"She's inside with hostages," Armsmaster said grimly. "And there's no way of knowing what kind of traps will be inside."

" _WATCH THE CAR_ ," I said.

None of them with the possible exception of Battery were all that tough, although Armsmaster's armor might offer some protection. I could ameliorate that for a certain length of time with Othalla's power, but only for two minutes at a time, and with as many of them as were here I'd spend all my time renewing their protections, leaving no time for anything else.

" _YOU_ ," I said, pointing at Armsmaster. Having a tinker on my side who was good at things other than vehicles might be a blessing. Once I got Bakuda's powers I'd understand how to disarm her bombs and avoid them.

Before he could respond, I grabbed his arm. He flinched, but then he asked, "What did you just do?"

" _GRANTED YOU IMMORTALITY,"_ I said. He stared at me and I continued. " _FOR THE NEXT TWO MINUTES."_

"Othalla," he said knowingly.

Before he could say anything further I switched us both into the mirror universe. He stared. "Where are we?"

" _THE UNDERWORLD_ ," I said " _A PALE REFLECTION OF THE WORLD THAT IS_."

"Meaning the barrier is weaker here," he said.

He wasn't slow on the draw at least. I nodded and grabbed his arm. Pulling him through the barrier we found ourselves inside, although this time the mirror universe didn't shatter. Instead everything was distorted and wrong.

" _WHERE IS SHE_?" I asked.

"The top floor," he said. "We think she has the prisoners up there. There will be traps everywhere."

Grabbing him I created a metal platform on the ground. I made it larger than I'd need and I added rails. As he stepped onto the platform my fingers moved over the railing.

He was watching. "So you were the one who took Rune."

" _NOT THE SECOND TIME_ ," I said. _"IT WAS ANOTHER. I DO NOT KNOW IF I HAVE SEEN HIS TRUE FACE_."

"The same one who destroyed New Wave?" he asked.

I nodded. We started floating upward.

"Why conceal it from us if it's true? We are the best to fight against him," he said.

" _LIKE YOU FIGHT THE ENDBRINGERS_?" I asked. " _WITH A GOOD DAY BEING ONE OUT OF FOUR DEAD?"_

"We have the Triumvirate," he said. "Nothing he has could beat that."

" _HE CAN APPEAR AS ANYONE. TAKE EIDOLON BY SURPRISE AND THE OTHERS WILL FALL. WITH IT FALLS THE WORLD_."

With a power like Eidolon's Gabriel would be able to do anything; teleport, detect Capes who were trying to hide, maybe even worse, and unlike Eidolon he wouldn't be limited to a few powers at once. He'd have an ever growing arsenal.

Before he could reply we were there. I blasted the windows open with Stormtiger's powers and I saw the lab inside. It looked like something out of a mad scientist's lair, although I recognized some of the tools with Squealer's skills.

In the center of the room was what looked like a bomb the size of a Volkswagon. It was only a replica on this side, but it still looked ominous.

" _A REPLICA_ ," I said. " _BUT EXACT. WHAT CAN YOU LEARN?_ "

He spent the next five minutes looking over the bomb. "Something this size is likely powerful enough to take out the Eastern Seaboard," he said. "And I don't have the skills to defuse this, at least not with a hundred percent accuracy."

" _THEN I SHALL TAKE THE SKILLS YOU NEED_ ," I said.

I'd hoped to avoid having to add another tinker, but it looked like I wasn't going to have much of a choice. The desire to build bombs was probably going to be problematic, but I'd manage somehow.

If I kept adding tinkers though there would come a day where I wouldn't be able to resist; once that happened I would be trapped in a lab, possibly for the rest of my life.

The actual lab was probably trapped to hell. The only way was to get in and out before Bakuda knew what hit her. To do that I had to resort to revealing another of my secrets to Armsmaster.

There was a mirror over the sink. I approached it and Armsmaster followed. I put my fingers to my lips and then the scene in the mirror swirled and changed.

"We'll force them to let us go, or I'll blow the entire country to hell!" a muffled female voice said.

A woman in a gas mask was lecturing several people who were tied down. One was apparently in the middle of surgery on his brain.

"Or maybe I'll just send you all out there and let the PRT deal with you...and you deal with them," she said. "Do you think they'll start shooting you dead before you blow them up?"

Muffled screams came from her victims, all of whom were apparently gagged and bound to the tables.

I took careful note of where she was in relation to the room and stepped to an area behind that. I appeared in the real world and with Cricket's speed I grabbed her by the throat and we were suddenly in the other world.

"What the hell?" she screamed. "You aren't sending me to the Birdcage!"

She was apparently trying to activate her bombs but nothing was happening. Radio signals and lasers didn't cross the dimensional barriers. It was possible that some of the things she had did.

A moment later the world exploded around me in fire and fury. Apparently if she couldn't destroy others she was willing to destroy herself. The bomb hurt, before I tamped down my pain response, but it wasn't as bad as some I'd already experienced this evening.

I tried to push regeneration into her, but I knew at a look that it was going to be too late. I saw her heart slowing and I could see her spine. Like me earlier in the day she was missing her lower half. Unlike me she didn't have any convenient regenerative abilities and this was beyond Othalla's ability to heal.

There was one thing I could do.

I pulled her to the floor, pulled her mask off and I touched her face. I pulled her ability and started pulling as much of her skill as I could. It wasn't much, because the light in her eyes died almost immediately.

Understanding flooded into me, and I knew that I'd be able to undo her traps with the smallest of clues. Armsmaster was staring at me with an expression I couldn't interpret.

" _I HAVE THE SKILLS WE NEED_ ," I said. I held out my hands and reluctantly he took one.

A moment later we were in the other universe. People were still screaming, but no one was dead, other than one man in a corner who had probably had a reaction to some of the medicines she had used.

Bakuda's body appeared next to Armsmaster as I let go of the mirror universe.

"We need to get to work," I said. "Also, stay very still. There's an area six inches to your right that will create a miniature black hole and pull you in if you trip it."

It took almost thirty minutes to undo all the traps. It took forty five to remove the bombs from people's heads. It was amazing to suddenly have surgical skills, and I used Othalla's regeneration on each victim as I finished with them, instead of sewing them up.

" _I WILL REVERSE THE BARRIERS_ ," I said. " _AND THEN I WILL LEAVE_."

"You can't leave!" he said. "You are under arrest!"

I shrugged. " _I CAN LEAVE YOU HERE OR SET YOU AND THE OTHERS FREE? CHOOSE_."

He scowled. "Fine. We can consider it a truce. This doesn't mean that we have a deal the next time we meet."

" _I AM NOT THE ENEMY,_ " I said.

"Then come down and make a statement," he said. "Come into the Protectorate building as a friend, or at least an ally instead of an enemy."

" _YOUR PEOPLE ARE NOT TO BE TRUSTED,"_ I said. " _MISS MILITIA HAS TRIED TO MURDER ME ONCE ALREADY_."

"You appeared to be trying to kill Crystal Pellham," he said. He was silent for a moment. "We did find her body."

I grimaced. I'd liked her. We hadn't been friends, but I'd felt like we could have been, had there been more time and had things been different.

" _MAYBE LATER_ ," I said. " _I WILL CONTACT YOU IN THE FUTURE_."

He had no choice but to let it go at that.


	39. Interlude: Colin

"You let the most dangerous Cape in North America outside of the Triumvirate go?" Piggot demanded.

"I made a deal to stop an S-class threat and potentially stopped the destruction of the eastern seaboard," Colin said. "Preliminary estimates of the bomb suggest that it has an equivalent yield of a teraton."

He could see that that number meant nothing to her, so he rushed to explain. "It's more than one hundred fifty times the energy of all the nuclear weapons on Earth before the disarmament. A five hundred mile an hour wind would strike things as far as two hundred fifty kilometers away. It would be reduced to three hundred miles an hour in a four hundred kilometer radius. As far as six hundred fifty kilometers there would be one hundred sixty mile an hour winds and seventy mile an hour winds as far as a thousand miles away."

"Enough," she said shortly. "Did you know about the bomb when you made the deal?"

"No," he said. "But I knew we were trapped and there was very little chance we were getting out. I had a responsibility to the members of my team as well as the innocent civilians inside."

"I'd have preferred it if you hadn't let him have the powers of the best bomb making tinker in the western hemisphere."

Probably the world, Colin said, although he was bright enough not to say so. He was aware of the tactical disadvantage that occurred when a bomber had the ability to deliver bombs anywhere almost untraceable.

"The skills he gained were instrumental in disarming the main bomb as well as in freeing the hostages and freeing us all from the twin spheres. They might have continued expanding, albeit slowly and would have eventually made the entire Bay uninhabitable."

She sighed. "I don't suppose you had a very good chance of taking him in by yourself anyway, even if you have fought Endbringers."

Colin bristled. "I had as good a chance as anyone. Given time to come up with countermeasures I'm sure I..."

"While he's continuing to snack on the rest of the Capes in the Bay," she said. "Which would require still more countermeasures. It's a losing battle."

"I gained valuable information on his capabilities," Colin said. "As well as information he supplied that may or may not be true."

"Oh?"

"He's not a teleporter," Colin said. "He slips into a different dimension that is an imitation of this one, moves through that space and emerges in this one."

"I thought that's what a lot of teleporters are thought to do."

"He has to physically move through that space," Colin said. "That takes time. It's both a disadvantage and an advantage."

"Because it means he can scout out locations beforehand." Piggot frowned. "I wish we could have recruited whoever he got that power from; it would have been a perfect power to use against the gangs."

"He could also see through reflective surfaces," Colin said. "And listen through them."

"Which is why you had us remove all the paintings from the walls."

"It's possible that the reflection from the light might be enough for him to use, I'm not sure." Colin scowled. "But we'll likely have to purge mirrors and the like from everywhere but the bathrooms."

She nodded shortly and made a note.

"I'm not certain in light of the night's events that we necessarily have to treat Vengeance as an enemy," Colin said. "He seemed willing to help."

"You don't think he was responsible for the murders of Parian and the others?"

Hesitating for a moment, Colin shook his head. "Vengeance claimed there was a second Cape, a powerful changer who was also a power thief. If that is true, I have to assume that the brain removal is a requirement of that power."

"You don't think Gamble is the one at fault?"

"We found Crystal Pellham's body, and the autopsy has already been done. She died at least five hours before our confrontation with her and Gamble."

"Meaning at least one changer was involved. Could it be Vengeance playing us? We know his face doesn't look like that normally."

"He claims not and I believe him," Colin said. "My lie detector isn't infallible, especially with all the abilities he has he might have a way to spoof it...but the software seemed to believe that he was being sincere. Furthermore the means of attack were too different."

He stood up and stared out the window. "Everything we've seen suggests that Shadow Stalker was Vengeance's first victim or nearly so. There is a logical progression in his methods as he has acquired one power after another. The attack on Rune's hospital room was perpetrated by someone with a host of powers already, most of which Vengeance has never used in any recorded appearance."

"What are the odds of having two people with powers like that showing up in such a short time."

"It's possible that their powers might actually be related. Family members often trigger with powers that are similar to each other."

"Danny and Taylor Hebert?" Piggot asked. "Could it be that Danny Hebert is trying to keep his daughter from being a monster?"

"I doubt he'd have told us about him if that was the case. He seemed to believe that the second power thief was someone named Gabriel."

"If they aren't allies then how does he know?"

"My guess was that he met this Gabriel before he was strong enough to face him, but after he was strong enough to get away. It would explain his sudden escalation recently. If he thinks he needs more powers to fight this Gabriel he might be willing to take more risks to get them."

"He might be willing to snack on more heroes," she said sourly. "You can't assume that Vengeance is a hero. He attacked Sophia Hess, a Ward."

"It could have been accidental," Colin said. "Perhaps one of Sophia's victims lashed out not knowing what they were doing. It might have been deliberate, and Vengeance simply didn't see Shadow Stalker as a hero because he knew about her extracurricular activities."

"Either case suggests Winslow," Piggot said.

"I've been reviewing all the footage from every encounter we have had with Vengeance," Colin said. "And I suspect that Taylor Hebert is in fact both Vengeance and Gamble."

"What?"

"We didn't have much footage of the fight between Gamble and Vengeance in the warehouse," Colin said. "But closer examination showed that both figures were somewhat transparent. Apparently Crusader's powers are more versatile than we thought."

Piggot cursed under her breath.

"Just a teenager with a grudge," she said. "I'd tell you to try to bring her in, but we still have mop up to do on the gangs and there's a new leader for the Empire, apparently one of the rank and file that triggered."

"It's surprising that it hasn't happened more over the past few days," Colin said. "Do you think they'll try to free their leaders even though they no longer have powers?"

"We had Strider remove them to a maximum security prison in upstate New York awaiting trial on multiple charges."

At his shocked look she said, "Now that they don't have any potential use for us during the Endbringer fights, the gloves are off. They won;t get any special treatment from me."

"We need to clean house," Colin said. "There have to have been moles from the gangs in our ranks and if Vengeance is right it is possible that this Changer might have been right in the middle of us all along."

"There are procedures," she said.

"None of which are designed for someone who may be a Changer, a Stranger and a thinker all at once," Colin said. "We'll have to move carefully if we are to catch them, and the more people know the greater the chance they'll catch on."

"If we corner them they'll have no reason not to take heads."

"They could even play it like they apparently did with the Pellhams and the Dallons," Colin said.

Forensics had shown a damning picture. The family members had been killed one after the other, most without signs of much of a struggle. The two youngest were missing, but Colin suspected it was only a matter of time. Losing Panacea for the Endbringer battles was going to be a crippling blow for the world. She'd made a real difference over the past few years.

"Coming at us in the guise of people we trust? Piggot asked. "There are procedures for that."

"Only if we suspect that something is going on."

The procedures were time consuming and inefficient. They were necessary but made the whole organization less effective as long as they were being used. Colin hated inefficiency but he hated having traitors in their midst.

He'd also prefer having his brain remain in place. He still had too many uses for it. Which wasn't to say that he hadn't considered uploading his consciousness at some point.

""Are we at that point now?" she asked.

He nodded. "I doubt this Gabriel would have taken the identity of one of the parahumans this early; there is too much scrutiny given to each of us because of worries about how much damage we would do if we were mastered. He might at some point, but it would probably be when he was ready to play out his end game and start taking as many heads as he could, much as he did with New Wave."

"We have a lot less contact with the rank and file," Piggot nodded. "A thinker would be able to infiltrate them more easily than a Ward or member of the team."

"We're in agreement then?" Colin asked.

She nodded shortly. "We'll inform only the parahumans, quietly. Otherwise there's too much danger of word of what's happening getting out, in which case it'd be too easy for a changer to get away.

"I'll make it so," Colin said. "I'll test each member before I inform them, just in case I'm wrong."

"And how can I be sure you are who you say you are?" Piggot said archly.

"You wouldn't have let me in here if you thought otherwise," Colin said. "Also, I just had Dragon administer a forty seven point exam to make sure I am who I say I am. The results are in appendix 2."

She nodded shortly.

Her telephone rang. Colin knew she preferred a land line because it was marginally more secure, but he preferred the convenience of the cellular network.

Picking it up, she said "I'm in a meeting. ….what?"

She listened for more than a minute taking notes before she finally set the receiver down.

"There's been an attack at juvenile hall. A monstrous creature with multiple heads made of shadow started attacking the other inmates before it went missing. Also missing, Sophia Hess."

They stared at each other for a long moment.

A depowered Shadow Stalker was incarcerated and shortly afterwards a shadow monster appeared? The possible connection was apparent to both of them.

"Do you think she got her powers back, but they somehow came back wrong?" Piggot asked. "if that's the case then we need to get all of Vengeance's other victims back before there is a bloodbath in the prison."

"It could be unrelated," Colin said mildly. "Or it could have been an attack directed at Shadow Stalker. God knows the girl found a way to make a lot of enemies in just a few years."

"Still we can't take the risk that it may be true."

"If it is, then do you think there are people we might need to warn?" Colin asked. "The Heberts, perhaps? While I think Taylor Hebert is nominally on our side now, that might change drastically if Shadow Stalker goes after her father, especially if we could have warned her and didn't."

She nodded grimly.

The last thing they needed was a second power draining S-class threat after them, especially now that she had the abilities of the finest bomb maker in the western hemisphere. She'd be able to do a lot more damage than Bakuda simply because she'd be able to deliver bombs almost untraceable through that other dimension. Colin suspected that Piggot knew that as well as he did.

"We'll need to tell her former teammates as well. It's possible that she might try to get in contact with them...or just as possibly she might go after them if she thinks they betrayed her."

"Her former co-conspirator's and the principal of her school if that is the criteria we are using," Colin said. "Considering how important this is, I'll brief the team and we'll deliver the warnings in person as quickly as we can."

"Consider her dangerous until otherwise proven," Piggot said. "She knows our procedures and she may have a grudge against us."

"I think you should remain on base for the time being," Colin said.

"When it rains, it pours," she said. She scowled for a moment then nodded. "I have dialysis equipment here and it's not like I don't spend half my nights here anyway."

Colin scowled. He wasn't looking forward to telling the others. As much as he hated to admit it, no one was looking forward to having to deal with Shadow Stalker again, in any capacity, either as victim or villain.

* * *

"Principal Blackwell," Colin called, knocking loudly on the door. "We need to talk."

He'd gone to the Hebert house already, but neither Hebert had been home. It was possible that the younger Hebert had suspected that they would have seen through her attempts at hiding her identity, but it was also possible that they simply hadn't been home.

He'd left a note, but he was going to have to make a more concerted effort to alert her after he made the rounds to the other houses. Miss Militia was dealing with her co-conspirators and the Wards had gathered together to watch each other's backs. None of them had seemed pleased by the news.

PRT crime scene technicians had already been on the scene in juvenile hall. The cameras that should have been working hadn't been, but the reports from the other terrified inmates had indicated that Vengeance had visited Sophia Hess shortly before she'd changed.

According to the girls, Hess had been left unharmed, and hadn't started changing until after Vengeance had left.

 _She triggered_.

The only reasons she would have triggered was if Taylor Hebert had terrified her to the point that she couldn't take it, which seemed unlikely given what he knew of Hess and her history. More likely, Hess had somehow realized that Hebert was Vengeance.

If she did, she'd realize that the incident that had landed her in juvenile hall had almost certainly been orchestrated by Hebert, which had probably been...emotionally traumatic.

While Colin wasn't all that good with interpersonal interactions, he did understand triggers and why they were personal to each hero and possibly even more so to each villain. They were the worst days of people's lives and discovering that the person she'd enjoyed beating down for more than a year was responsible for most of her problems would have been bad enough.

Learning that she was now arguably the most powerful parahuman in the Bay would have been unbearable.

It was only arguable because the power level of this Gabriel hadn't been quantified yet. Otherwise there would have been no question in Colin's mind.

He knocked again, and he heard movement inside.

Listening closely, it sounded like gurgling.

Stepping back, he kicked the door open, grimacing as he felt the strain on his knees. "Armsmaster here; I am investigating suspicious sounds inside the home of Principal Blackwell."

"Ten Four chief," Clockblocker said. For once he didn't sound particularly cheerful.

Hannah had once told Colin that Clockblocker acted like a clown to disarm people, to relieve group tension and to try to get people to like him. It didn't work with Colin, but no one had ever accused Colin of having a good sense of humor.

He could see how it might help during times of stress. Hannah had shown him the research. His own attempts at jokes had been...less than successful.

Apparently good joke telling involved something about timing that he didn't yet understand.

The fact that Clockblocker was now serious was a sign of just how affected the Wards were by this news. They had all seemed dismayed, appropriately, and some of them had even seemed angry, especially Vista.

Vista had her own ideas about what a hero should be, and Shadow Stalker had never met those criteria.

Cautiously Colin made his room through the house until he reached the bedroom. He hesitated. If he'd misread the situation things might get embarrassing quickly. It had happened twice before.

The one that had made him uncomfortable had been the woman who hadn't been displeased that he'd shown up. That had actually disturbed him.

Grimacing he opened the door.

The first thing he saw was the blood; it was everywhere.


	40. Interlude Emma

It wasn't fair.

Her entire life had gone to hell, all because Taylor Hebert hadn't known her place. Emma wasn't sure exactly when it had all gone wrong, but she knew it had started to change long before the day the PRT had shown up at her house with questions.

Throwing Sophia under the bus had only been following Sophia's philosophy, after all. Winners rise to the top and losers fall to their rightful place. Most importantly of all, winners don't get caught.

Sophia had taken things too far and she'd been burned for it.

The fact that she'd set things up in a way that had been uncomfortably like Emma's own traumatic experience hadn't helped any. Being attacked by multiple Asians with no one around willing to help and Shadow Stalker watching from the shadows?

It had felt like a slap in the face. Even putting it on video wouldn't have made things any better. As much as Emma had come to enjoy their little interactions with Taylor it would have reminded her too much of what had happened.

Sophia should have used Caucasians or Blacks; the Empire had been out for obvious reasons but there had been many others who would have done whatever she wanted, even if it was just for a shot at dating Emma or even Madison.

Instead she'd almost gone out of her way to dig at Emma, as though she'd doubted that Emma had become a winner.

Emma had simply followed the philosophy to the letter, and like always she'd been rewarded. In return for her testimony as a witness and her testimony in Sophia's upcoming trial they had chosen not to press charges.

Unfortunately, her father had gotten spooked and transferred her to a different school. She hadn't had the grades for Arcadia, but her father had pulled strings to get her put in Immaculata, even though she wasn't technically living in the district.

Her father had seemed to think that she was being influenced by bad elements at Winslow. He hadn't realized that she was at the top of the pack there. Starting over from the bottom at a new school was agonizing, although her looks and status as a model was already helping her rise.

Helping to create that status was why she was here, after all, having invited some of the key players in the school social scene to a pajama party.

She hadn't had a pajama party since she'd been friends with Taylor, something that she didn't like to think about any more than she had to. Taylor was weak and got everything she deserved. It was inevitable that Taylor was going to end up dead in an alley or maybe in an ABB whorehouse somewhere, a cheap one since she didn't have the looks to attract more expensive fare.

"Is everyone ready?" Emma asked cheerfully.

The other four girls stared at her as though they'd never played any of the games that were played at parties like this. It was possible that they hadn't.

"Are you sure we should be doing this?" Amanda asked. "It seems a little creepy."

"That's the whole point," Emma said. "Getting creeped out is fun...it's a lot better than worrying about the real things out there."

They all shuddered. There was a flaming skulled monster roaming the streets, the creepiest parahuman since the Slaughterhouse Nine. While a few people thought it was a hero, most of their social group was terrified of it, especially of the video of it saving Taylor.

Why it had bothered Emma wasn't sure. She'd almost been disappointed when she'd heard from Madison that Taylor had showed up for school after it had all happened. Getting eaten by a monster was at least an interesting way to die, unlike being stabbed by gang members.

"Why does it have to be so dark?" Amanda asked.

"That's the point of the Midnight Game," Emma said. "You summon the Midnight Man and he only shows up in the dark."

"But blood? That doesn't seem very hygienic," Sarah said. "Couldn't we cheat and just write our names down?"

"Won't work unless we follow the ritual as written," Emma said. "What, are you scared?"

"I just don't like pain," Sarah admitted.

"Everyone else is doing it," Emma said. Looking around she saw that no one else was objecting. Good. Getting them involved in something like this was an important first step in getting them used to doing what she told them.

Once people gave in to something, even if it was something small, they were more likely to give in to bigger things. Getting them to follow her in this would make the other things she asked of them seem less ridiculous.

Besides, everyone liked a good scare.

There were small grunts of pain as blood dripped on paper, one drop from each of them. Each of them had signed their full names on their own sheets of paper.

"Now light your candles," Emma said, once they'd all applied band aids. No point in getting blood on the carpet after all.

One after the other, they lit their candles and placed them on the slips of paper at the foot of the door.

"Knock on the door," Emma said quietly. "It had to be twenty two knocks exactly."

They each knocked in turn, counting the knocks. The final knock was at midnight, as the game suggested.

Emma blew out the candle and the others followed suit. She closed the door to the room.

"We've allowed him in," she said in a spooky voice. "Relight the candles and we'll start the game."

They were in Sarah's house, which was perfect for this game because it was so large. This house had twenty thousand square feet of space and it made the Barnes house look like the Hebert hovel. It would be easy to get lost here, which made wandering around with candles atmospheric and spooky.

She wasn't sure she'd be able to keep the girls awake until the traditional 3:33 AM, but she was going to try. These girls seemed like the kind who hadn't ever taken a risk in their lives. They certainly hadn't trailed a superhero and watched her brutally beat thugs, gang members and sometimes people Emma suspected were just random passers by.

Brockton Bay at night was far more terrifying than some mythical shadow monster.

"Should your candle go out, that means the Midnight Man is near you," Emma said. "You have ten seconds to relight it, or circle yourself in salt. Otherwise..."

Sarah squeaked.

The original legend was that the Midnight man would give you hallucinations until 3:33, but Emma had exaggerated the story a little. After all, hallucinating your greatest fear wasn't the worst thing that could happen.

She saw her greatest fear almost every night when she slept.

Although the house was huge, it was also old, built during Brockton Bay's glory days. Houses this large tended to be drafty, which meant there were going to be times where the candles went out on their own without any help from her. Setting the mood had made the girls susceptible.

"Staying in one spot will mean he'll find you," Emma said. "Don't turn on the lights, don't use a flashlight and don't go to sleep. Whatever you do, don't provoke him."

"Provoke him?" Sarah asked, her voice tense with anxiety.

"Taunting him,' Emma said. "Pretending he doesn't exist. Pretty much if you've screamed at someone in a horror movie for doing it, don't do it."

"You mean like wandering around in the middle of the night with candles?" Amanda asked sourly.

Emma ignored her. The important thing was to create the right atmosphere and the others would be eating out of her hand.

"If you feel a sudden drop in temperature he might be near you," she said. She'd taken notes of where the vents were earlier in the day. With any luck the air conditioning would come on, since it had turned unseasonably hot over the past few days.

"If you see a humanoid figure in the darkness you'd better get moving," she continued. "Because he'll be coming for you. If you hear soft whispers in the darkness, he may be lying in wait."

In the darkness, even indistinct silhouettes of furniture could look like figures lying in wait. Especially for the girls other than Sarah, since it wasn't their house and they weren't familiar with the layout.

The whispers would be easy to fake.

The fact that Sarah's parents weren't home would make it even easier. Emma had wanted to get Sarah to invite boys over, but she hadn't been willing; she was still too much of a goody too shoes. Emma planned to break her of that soon.

She opened the door and the others followed her, hands against the wall.

"Your house looks creepy in the dark," Amanda admitted to Sarah.

"You should have seen it before we redecorated," Sarah said. "There were rooms that still had orange shag carpet."

They all shuddered at that.

Emma's light suddenly went out. She frowned and grabbed her lighter. She hadn't felt the breeze that had done it.

"Scary," she said after she lit the candle again.

"What did you say?" Sarah asked.

"Scary," Emma repeated.

"I heard that part," Sarah asked. "What did you say afterwards?"

"I didn't say anything," Emma said. She frowned. "What did you think I said?"

"I just heard you mumble something," Sarah said.

Emma felt a little chill down her spine. They were just getting involved in the game, that was all. They were trying to scare her and maybe each other a little, like purposefully pushing the planchette on a oijia board.

"Let's keep moving,' she said shortly.

As they moved down the hallway, Emma almost thought she could hear it herself, the whispering of multiple voices in the darkness. None of the others said anything, though and so she pushed forward. There was no point in scaring herself, after all.

"Where should we go next?" she asked.

There was no answer from behind her, so she turned around. The girls were gone.

"This isn't funny," Emma said, scowling. Had they ditched her in an attempt to scare her? It wasn't going to work. After all, she was a survivor. She'd survived the horrors of the ABB, she'd survived the night in Brockton Bay and she'd survive a stupid schoolgirl's game.

In the distance she saw four lights in the darkness, flickering.

This was an old style hallway, she recalled, with paintings and chairs. She almost thought she saw a figure in the darkness sitting on the chair. She carefully moved forward and the light of her candle showed nothing being there.

She moved as quickly as she could toward the lights in the darkness, but no matter how far she walked they always seemed to be farther away.

The whispering seemed to be getting louder as well. Sometimes it was behind her, sometimes it was from a room to the side. The shadows around her seemed to take on a malevolent life of their own.

Had the girls intended this all along? Had they intended to mock her? Emma had thought her efforts at getting a foothold in the social scene had been taking root, but if they were willing to do this she had to have been mistaken.

She wouldn't stand for it. She'd pretend like she was a good sport, but she'd remember what they'd done and sooner or later she'd make them pay for this. She'd steal their boyfriends, start untraceable rumors, make their lives hell in ways they hadn't even begun to consider.

They'd regret turning against Emma Barnes.

She heard something murmuring indistinctly close to her ear. There were still four candles in the distance, but it would have been easy enough for two of them to have given their candles to each other with two sneaking back to prank her.

She scowled and lashed out with her arm. She didn't hit anything but the wall.

Looking around she didn't see any of the girls, but she did see movement at the doorway to the bathroom.

The darkness there was somehow deeper than it was elsewhere. It looked like a humanoid figure, almost, but the proportions were all wrong. Where its head should have been almost brushed the top of the doorway and it was unnaturally thin.

Its arms dangled almost to where Emma's knees would have been, with hands that seemed unnaturally long and distended.

The face was the darkest part of all.

Had Emma been any other teenager her age she would have fled, but she was a survivor. She knew it was the girls pranking her anyway.

She ignored the way her hands trembled as she approached the doorway. As the light from her candle reached the doorway the darkness evaporated into regular darkness. She still wasn't convinced, though.

She pushed her way into the bathroom. It was large and opulent compared to her own and she felt a momentary flash of envy. Her father simply didn't make enough money to maintain this kind of lifestyle.

Maybe she should have fought the move from Winslow more. There she'd been a medium sized fish in a very small pond. She'd been the richest girl in the entire school. Here she couldn't compare.

As she turned she saw something moving in the mirror. Flashes of light caught the corner of her eye.

It was the girls, still holding their candles; they were standing together talking in hushed tones. Emma stared at them, flabbergasted. She couldn't understand anything they were saying; she couldn't hear them at all. They weren't making any noise at all.

Emma didn't understand. Was this a window instead of a mirror? If it was, why couldn't they see her?

Suddenly she felt hands on her shoulders. She tried to turn, but the grip was like iron. She couldn't have moved no matter how hard she struggled.

" _Hello survivor."_

The voice whispering in hr ear didn't sound like Sophia, not really, but it couldn't have been anyone else. Emma suddenly felt a chill down her spine as she realized that Sophia might hold a grudge. She'd seen her use real arrows on people who hadn't done anything in particular against her. What would she do to Emma, who was planning on turning State's evidence when her trial started.

Maybe no one had told her yet. Emma wasn't foolish enough to believe that though, and so she tried to struggle to get away.

All the curiously long fingers around her shoulder did was tighten until she cried out in pain.

" _Not happy to see me?_ " the voice continued. " _And after we were such good friends_."

"I thought you lost your powers," Emma blurted.

" _I did, but now I have better ones_ ," the voice said. She could feel breath on her ear, and she could smell something fetid and rotten.

"You triggered again?" Emma asked. She blinked. "Was juvie that bad?"

" _I've had worse_ ," the voice said. " _But being betrayed by everyone...by teammates, by family...by people who were supposed to be my friends...that was the worst part_."

The hands tightened again, but this time Emma didn't cry out. Sophia hated weakness, and if she was going to get out of this she had to keep her respect.

"I wasn't going to actually testify," she lied. "I was going to make it look like Taylor's fault."

" _IT IS HEBERT'S FAULT!_ " the voice said. " _WHO DO YOU THINK DID THIS TO ME_?"

"Gave you powers?" Emma asked, confused.

" _She made me a freak,_ " the voice said. " _Set me up. Pretended to be powerless when she is really the most powerful Cape in the entire Bay_."

"What...Taylor?"

" _She was the one who stole my powers ion the first place_."

"What?" Somehow, even though Emma heard the words, she couldn't quite understand them. Sophia seemed to be saying that Taylor was some kind of powerful cape, but that couldn't be right.

Taylor was weak. That's why she'd had to be left behind like the other detritus of Emma's childhood. For her to be some kind of parahuman...it meant that the entire world was somehow wrong.

"Who?" Emma asked. "Who is she?"

" _The one with the flaming head_ ," the voice whispered. She chuckled, and it was a wet, phlegmy sound that sounded horribly wrong. " _She calls herself Vengeance_."

Sophia continued without bothering to wait for Emma. " _I'm the one who will have vengeance. I've already visited Blackwell. I'll be visiting the others soon enough...all the ones who thought they were better than me._ "

"What about me?" Emma asked.

" _We're still friends, aren't we_?" the voice asked slyly.

"Y-yes," Emma said. Maybe there was a way to get out of this after all. They'd united over their hatred of Taylor in the past, maybe they could do so again.

" _You'll be staying here with me, on this side of the mirror,_ ' the voice said. " _I have only one question for you._ "

The hands on her shoulder's loosened and Emma stepped away and turned quickly.

What had been Sophia once was no longer even remotely human. There were multiple heads, including that of Principal Blackwell, which stared out of her stomach and looked as though it was trying to scream.

Emma forced herself to remain calm. She was strong enough to get through this.

"What is your question?" she asked. Her voice didn't even waver.

" _Eyes, mouth, nose or ears_?" the thing that had once been Sophia said, brandishing multiple limbs that had foot long claws.

Emma began to scream, but there was no one to hear her.


	41. Coil

It was almost done.

I'd cleared out almost all the parahuman villains in Brockton Bay, and while there were still clashes between the PRT and police and the gangs, it seemed like it way dying down.

Once I cleared out Coil there would only be a few outliers like Uber and Leet and Circus, people who were barely villains at all.

After that it would just be a matter of keeping new villains from coming in...and who was going to risk coming into a city where someone might steal your powers?

Only Gabriel remained as a real threat after Coil. I'd made some progress with Armsmaster, and hopefully the PRT would not try to murder me or dad, at least before I had a chance to finish what needed to be done.

The fact that Gabriel seemed to think Leviathan was coming wasn't encouraging, but I had hopes that I'd at least be able to help slow him down. I had multiple abilities to make myself tougher. Using Fenja or Menja's powers in concert with Lungs along with my basic biokinetic aura would make me tougher than anyone in the Bay. Lung had survived Leviathan with only his base power.

My cell phone rang as I drove along the back roads. I'd promised my father once that I'd never use my cell phone while driving, since that was how Mom died. I probably wasn't in any danger now, but I pulled my car over and picked up.

"Miss Hebert, I'm so glad you answered." The voice on the phone was oily and slick. "I have in my possession someone you hold very dear to you."

My hands tensed on the steering wheel. There was no one I cared about, really, other than Dad. Mom was dead, I had no friends...even Tattletale was more of an ally of convenience.

"I'll do things to you," I said. "You'd be surprised what someone with my set of skills can do."

"I'm sure you can do terrible things," the voice said. He sounded amused. "But you won't be doing anything to me as long as I have your father."

"I have Othalla's power," I said. "That means I can keep hurting you over and over again, and just when you think it's all over I'll start again."

"He won't be hurt as long as you do what I say," he said.

"What do you want?" I asked.

"Attack the Protectorate, drain them, do what you do best," he said.

"And then you'll let Dad go?" I asked.

"Yes," he said.

It was obvious to me that he was lying, even without any drained skills at sensing motives. I was too powerful to let free, and once I had my father the grudge I held against him would have to be repaid.

I switched gears and slipped into the other world. As I did I thought I heard my phone start to ring, but there was no reception in the mirror universe obviously, so I would have to catch it later.

Coil was most likely going to keep dad deep in his base. As far as he knew I didn't know where that was and it was heavily guarded from what Tattletale had said.

Finding Dad, though wouldn't necessarily be easy. I doubted that Tattletale had told Coil about my mirror universe, but it sounded like she wasn't the only Thinker he had on staff. I was going to break in through the mirror universe and see if I could find Dad through the mirrors. It was unlikely, given what I'd been told of the layout.

However, being able to take mist form was good for more than choking people out.

As I reached the entrance to Coil's lair I parked the car outside. I hadn't shown dad my hellcar yet and I was excited.

As I reached the mirrored version of the outside door I simply kicked my way through the door. I could have turned to mist and slipped under the door, but it was possible that I might have to bring Dad or even Tattletale back through this way, and if I had to do so quickly, say because of an injury Othala's power wasn't strong enough to stop, it might have to be quick.

I got back into the hellcar and parked in the parking lot downstairs.

Some of the doors, surprisingly were too thick for me to punch through. Those I had to burn my way through, which was surprisingly easy, although it sometimes took more time than I wanted to bother with.

None of the mirrors I saw had any one wandering through them; the mirrors were almost exclusively in the lobby. It didn't look like Coil went out for the expensive décor. His lair was decorated utilitarianly.

Reaching a bathroom, I checked through a mirror to see that it was unoccupied. I then slipped into a stall and jumped back to the real world. A moment later I was in mist form and slipping through the ventilation system.

Unlike movie ventilation systems, you'd have had to be the size of a rat to get through these tunnels. As I began moving through the tunnels I felt a strong wind trying to dissipate me. Stormtiger's powers helped neutralize those winds easily, although if I stayed here long enough there might be some sensor tripped somewhere telling them something was wrong with the system.

There were room after room that were empty and unfinished. It looked as though this had once been an Endbringer shelter, although I was confused as to how he could have repurposed one considering how important everyone found them.

I'd been doing Endbringer drills since I was four years old, and I and every other person in the city knew where all the shelters were; you never knew when you were going to be caught out during an attack.

Sometimes I saw things that disturbed me. I saw a little girl hooked up to an IV bag. She looked like she was having trouble, tossing and turning and looked like she was in pain.

There were mercenaries guarding caches of boxes. I assumed they had to be weapons from the markings on the boxes.

Room after room I searched, and none of them had Dad in them. If I didn't find my father I was going to be in trouble. I couldn't risk his safety, not when he was my last link to normality. He was all I had left of my family, and without him I no longer had any reason to hold back.

Finally the winds carried a scent to me, one that was almost as familiar as my own. How I could smell without having a nose I wasn't sure; maybe the powers didn't actually use my nose to smell at all.

In any case I was rushing through the ducts when I heard the alarms going off. Apparently my passage through the ducts was being interpreted as a bioterrorism attacks because the grates began to seal themselves off.

I tried to jump to the mirror universe, but I couldn't; in fog form my mirror earrings didn't exist.

Reaching Dad's prison cell, at least from the smell, I shifted into shadow state while still in fog form. It was weird and unlike anything I had done, and as I passed through the grate I would have screamed as I discovered the grates were electrified.

Dad was in a chair, his face swollen and bruised. Three men had rifles pointed at him.

A moment later I was inside of all three of them, choking and clawing away at their insides in fog form. They tried to claw at their own throats and one even tried pointing his rifle at Dad, but I exploded out of him. Using Stormtiger's powers on something as fragile as lungs was like using a fist on shaving cream.

Within moments all three of them were dead. I should have felt worse about it, but they'd taken my father and I had little sympathy for them. They'd chosen their path and now they'd have to die on it.

Dad was staring and I was sure we were going to have words about this later. The problem had been that even with my array of powers I wouldn't necessarily have been able to stop them from shooting him, not all at once.

I reappeared next to Dad and I touched his shoulder. A moment later we were in the mirror universe.

As I caused spikes to shoot up from the floor to cut his bonds, I asked "How did they catch you?"

"They were waiting for me in Boston," he said. "I don't know how they knew."

They had to have a precog on their payroll; I doubted that Tattletale would have been able to figure out where Dad would end up without at least seeing us. It was possible that Coil's mysterious power was the culprit, but I'd be careful to not make assumptions.

Kicking the door down, I said, "I still have some things to do. There's a car in the garage; you can't miss it. I left the keys in it. If you get yanked into the real universe, drive out and don't look back."

If he got yanked into the real universe it was because the mirror universe had collapsed. That would mean that something seriously bad had happened to me. While I didn't expect anything bad to happen, the one thing I'd learned in my time as a Cape was that Cape powers were unpredictable.

It was possible that Coil had hired a master, for example, something that I had no powers to defend against. Someone like Gray Boy could take me out with a touch, possibly even before I was able to drain him. The fact that I wouldn't want to end my life looking like a film extra from the 1930's wouldn't help.

He glanced back in the room and I could tell he was torn by what I had done; possibly much more than I was. The scary thing about murder was that it got easier the more that you did it. I didn't know anything about the men I'd killed; for all I knew they'd been blackmailed into it.

I doubted it though. They looked like mercenaries.

A moment after sending Dad off, I reappeared in Coil's base. This time I didn't bother to use any mirror universe tricks. I'd been given the layout by Tattletale and I knew that Coil was not likely on base at all. His power would ensure of that. It didn't matter though; Tattletale had figured out who he was, and once I'd wiped out his power base I'd go after him, secret identity be damned.

The first step was destroying his base. Tattletale said there were others, but most of them were in the process of being set up. This was his main base and it was the one base where losing it would be most damaging to him.

Coil wasn't a risk taker unless he knew he would win, at least according to Tattletale. With his power, the entire concept of risk was moot. If he was really a precog he knew in advance whether he would win or not.

The first of Coil's men arrived with submachine guns. I allowed myself to form armor with Hookwolf's power and as they blasted away at me I used Stormtiger's powers to blast them back. I exploded into action then, using my stolen pit fighter skills the moment I was among them.

I didn't kill this time, instead choosing to break bones and incapacitate. With Cricket's speed and my augmented strength it was easy.

The alarms were blaring and more men were coming around the corner as the last of the men I was fighting fell to the floor. More bullets came my way, and this time I dodged them, simply to see if rumors about Cricket's capabilities were true.

They were, and I felt a savage pleasure take over. My jaw felt funny and I felt myself getting stronger.

I was going to destroy the base anyway; why not see what I could actually do? Why fight Lung's power when I knew that once Leviathan came I'd need to embrace it anyway?

Losing myself in the fight was curiously enjoyable. I would have thought I'd have gotten tired, but as I kept growing I grew stronger and stronger instead.

There was a Cape wearing a costume in red and gold. They actually provided a challenge, being at least as fast as I was. It was a joy fighting them; they attacked me with a sledgehammer and with my power I barely felt it. The longer I fought the easier it got, until finally they made a mistake allowing me to grab them by the throat.

I ripped their costume and touched them, and suddenly knowledge of how to imitate male body language flooded me. I suddenly knew how to aim well enough to hit a fly in mid air, and I sensed that there were a whole host of minor powers.

I dropped the Cape, who fell to the ground and started to cry. They'd fought well, so I didn't bother to break any bones. I simply left them on the floor behind me.

Now I was large enough that my head scraped the ceiling. If I kept getting larger I would start to tear through the structure, which wouldn't bother me, but the last thing I wanted was to be crushed because I got too big.

I found myself gagging as I entered another area; there was a gas being released that made it hard to breathe. Stormtiger's winds blew the gas away from me, and I felt my rage growing.

Coil had kidnapped my father. He'd threatened the one person I had left in the world who meant anything to me. I was going to make him pay, and this was part of it.

I found myself at the doorway to the little girl's room. She was being bundled up by men who were trying to carry her away. I didn't let them.

Speaking was difficult by this point, but the girl looked up at me, her head lolling to one side.

"There was an ninety eight percent chance you would save me if your father was captured,' she mumbled. "I'm sorry."

I could feel the power rippling under her skin, but I could also tell that there was something wrong with her. From the track marks on her arms it looked like she'd been drugged and it was obvious that she wasn't here willingly.

My rage against Coil was only getting worse as I slipped into the mirror universe and I ran through the hallways with her. I found Dad who was struggling with a door that without electricity could not be opened. I handed her to him and I kicked the door opened.

I led them through the hallways, my anger slowly fading. I felt myself shrinking and by the time we reached the parking lot I was almost back to myself.

"Drive as far as you can," I said. "I still have work to do."

As I appeared back in the other world I froze as I saw PRT vans everywhere. Before I could do anything, my telephone rang.

PRT agents were staring at me as I took the call.

"I called the PRT," Tattletale's voice came over the phone. "And told them who he was. Apparently he decided that getting arrested was better than facing you in his base."

I felt a sudden outburst of rage. Coil was supposed to have been mine. He'd made it personal when he'd attacked my father, when he'd taken a child. I needed to see him squirming under my hand as I ripped the powers from his bones.

Tattletale should have trusted me. Instead she'd called the PRT while she was somewhere else.

I jumped back into the mirror world before the PRT agents could surround me with containment foam sprayers outstretched. Apparently not everyone had gotten the message that I was supposed to be the hero now.

The three dead men that I'd killed probably wouldn't make that reputation any better.

Dad was still strapping the girl into the seat when I stopped him. I got the girl out of the car, then nodded for him to get out.

I appeared back in the real universe, although not where I'd disappeared from. I had the girl in my arms.

"He has a hostage," I heard one agent whisper into the communicator built into his costume.

I gently set her down in the back of a PRT van with open doors, then lifting my hands I switched into the other universe.

I'd heard gunfire in the distance before I'd switched universes. Apparently the PRT was assaulting Coil's lair.

From Tattletale's perspective it was a coup. Getting me and the PRT to do her dirty work for her, she had come out smelling like a rose. I had no doubt that she'd have been embezzling Coil's ill gotten gains for hours before she'd called the PRT. By the time they got to his records there would be no evidence that he'd ever had any funding.

She'd have gained good will from the PRT, would have dismantled Coil's criminal Empire, and she'd have millions of dollars.

All it had cost was my own personal revenge and my peace of mind.

I couldn't help but feel betrayed, and if I saw her again I wasn't sure what I would do. I understood what she'd done from utilitarian point of view but it was hard not feeling like she'd betrayed me.

Having a lifetime's worth of betrayal in the course of two years made me particularly sensitive to it.

The one consolation I had was that there were no longer any villains in Brockton Bay that I had to worry about other than Gabriel. I'd accomplished more in a few short weeks than the Protectorate ever had since they'd been founded in the area.

At least things were finally looking up.


	42. Minions

"We need to take you and your father into custody," Miss Militia insisted.

The fact that they'd sent Armsmaster, Assault and Dauntless along as well to take two supposedly powerless people in told me that they knew or at least suspected who I was.

"What are you charging us with?" My father asked. Considering that he'd seen me murder three men less than an hour ago, he shouldn't have had to ask.

We hadn't even had time to talk about it.

"Nothing," Miss Militia said smoothly. "We need to take you into protective custody."

Dad chuckled. "You must take us for idiots."

I put my hand on his shoulder and I subtly granted him invulnerability. If they made a move we'd be out of this dimension before anyone could could anything, but there was always the possibility that things could go wrong quicker than even I could anticipate.

"Sophia Hess has escaped from prison," Miss Militia said. "Having triggered after a visit from Vengeance. We aren't entirely sure what powers she has, but they seem to be nasty."

I froze. I should have anticipated that being a fear based hero would have its downsides. Triggering someone wasn't something I'd ever wanted to do.

Granting Sophia new powers made me feel a little sick.

"She's already murdered principal Blackwell, having beheaded her, and she kidnapped Emma Barnes," Miss Militia said.

She showed us a picture. Lying on an unfamiliar bathroom counter were two bloody ears that looked like they had been torn off someone's head. A familiar earring was in one of them.

I felt suddenly sick to my stomach. As much as I'd hated Emma all this time, we'd been friends once. I'd never want something like this for anyone.

"We've already taken Madison Clements and her family into protective custody and we are keeping an eye on her former...friends."

She was talking about the Wards. The emphasis she put on the word meant it couldn't be anything else.

Who else would Sophia blame for this?

Miss Militia took a deep breath and said, "We know you probably don't have much to worry about, but your father is an entirely different story. Our analysis of Miss Hess's personality is such that we believe if she can't get you she'll go for the people you care about."

They knew who I was. The fact that Armsmaster and the others were staking out the perimeter of the house instead of inside threatening me suggested that this was all true.

"Even if what you are saying is true, we can't exactly go into witness protection," Dad said. "I have a job...without that we can't even afford to live here, much less anywhere else."

We still had fifteen thousand dollars in cash left in the theater; now that I had my own handy pocket dimension we didn't even have to have that.

"There are programs to help," Miss Militia said. "Miss Hess was involved in an afterschool program that has a legal aide program."

Dad and I glanced at each other, even as I reapplied his invulnerability.

"Why would she come after Taylor?" Dad asked.

I'd screwed up. I'd said something in our last meeting that had revealed who I was to her, and she was going to come after me and my family as a result. When was I going to learn to keep my mouth shut?

"She seems to blame a number of people in her former life for her current predicament," Miss Militia said. "We are working with a...new thinker who has worked up a psychological profile."

It had to be Tattletale. I still resented her for setting me up the way she did, but I'd seen the phone call she'd tried to make to me before I'd jumped worlds. Apparently she'd tried to warn me of something. That didn't mean I forgave her, but it did make it burn a little less.

The little girl had apparently had something to do with manipulating Coil into pressuring me; I wasn't sure how because I wasn't sure exactly what her power was, but she sounded like a precog. I wondered if I could get her to give it up her power voluntarily. There was no way she'd be able to keep her power, not with Gabriel going around attacking people.

Besides, it had gotten her kidnapped and addicted to drugs once already. I should have given her some regeneration but I hadn't thought of it. Hopefully now that most of the Capes were gone I'd get a chance to settle into all of my powers and get used to using them in the most efficient ways.

"I have an uncomfortable feeling that surrendering to you would get me clapped in chains or surrounded by containment foam," I said. I looked Miss Militia in the eye. "I don't think you would like that much."

"We'd sue the pants off you,' Dad agreed, glancing at me. The look he gave me was one of incredulity. The last thing we needed was for me to admit I was Vengeance when we didn't have to.

"We don't have anything against you, Taylor," Miss Militia said. "In fact we're starting to think that it might be for the best if we work together."

"Work together?" Dad asked. "With the people who actively helped keep my daughter locked in hell for two years?"

Miss Militia looked at him startled.

"We know who this Hess girl was," he said. "We've known for a while. We haven't said anything and we won't, but if you try to make us disappear we will use it."

"Threatening to reveal a Ward's identity is a crime," Miss Militia said. "Even an ex-ward. She still has a family to be considered."

"You've as much as said the girl is a monster now and you are still protecting her?" Dad asked incredulously. "She's running around cutting off ears and heads. How much loyalty can she actually deserve?"

"The same loyalty as your daughter would have if she joined us," Miss Militia said. "We know that Hess isn't the only threat out there. Vengeance told us that there is a serial killing cape out there named Gabriel. We are the last line of defense against him."

I chuckled. "You don't have that many more members than New Wave, not really. How much harder do you think it will be for him to do the same thing to you that he did to them?"

"We have better operational security," she said. "We have procedures, computer surveillance and we are bringing new members in for the duration of the crisis."

"Bully on you," I said.

"You've already had three identities," Miss Militia said. "How hard would it be for you to create a fourth?"

They wouldn't want Vengeance the way he was, of course. He was too scary, too PR unfriendly. They'd want whatever my new identity was to be something more like Vista. They'd try to make me cute.

"And what if I say no?" I asked suddenly. The thought of being bound by paperwork, by rules and restrictions wasn't particularly appealing. They couldn't force me, that much I knew. Even if the Triumvirate came after me I'd simply slip away into another universe and they'd have to find me when I returned.

"Would you rescind the offer to protect my father?" I asked.

Were they using my father's safety to force me into their organization?

"Our thinker suggested that would backfire badly," Miss Militia said. "Very badly. The answer then, is no."

That meant that they'd at least considered it. They'd tried to kill me in the past; this woman had actually shot me. If it wasn't for my worry about my father I wouldn't even be listening to her.

The problem was that I couldn't exactly put Dad in a lockbox until everything was safe, as much as I wanted to.

A random thought about a stasis bomb flashed through my mind, but I wasn't going to hand Dad a bomb and have him wake up six months later. We'd lose our house for one thing and he'd lose the job he loved.

If it wasn't for his love of the Bay and the Dockworkers we'd have probably moved after Mom died.

I could save the stasis idea for a last minute emergency measure though. It was possible to make one the size of a keychain and if he had it he could be made invulnerable until someone who knew what they were doing let him out.

"I'm not admitting to anything," I said. "But if I were a parahuman, I might be willing to work with the PRT. I wouldn't work for them. I have serious grievances with them."

"There's still the issue of your father's safety," she said.

"I've got some ideas how to handle that," I said. "He'll be just fine."

She tried to convince me, but I was adamant, and thankfully Dad backed me up. Considering that he was the one in danger from a maddened Sophia Hess, I thought that was particularly brave of him.

Still, in the end they did leave.

"I hope you have a plan, kiddo," he said.

"I need access to a lab," I said. "And I'll whip up some things that will keep you safe until I can get to you."

"Oh?" he asked.

"I can replicate Clockblocker's power in a bomb form," I said. "Except I can make it last as long as I want, powered by the forces underlying the universe."

"So like Gray Boy's power," he said dubiously.

"The victim...that would be you, wouldn't be aware of the passage of time at all," I said. "And in the meantime it wouldn't matter if Leviathan decided to try to destroy you, nothing would happen."

"And you could undo it?" he asked.

"Easily," I said. "I can even set a proximity fuse keyed to parahumans who aren't me. All you'd have to do is carry it on your keychain and you'll be fine."

"How long would it take to make something like that, and wouldn't it be expensive or require a sophisticated lab?"

"I'm going to bully a couple of idiots into letting me use their lab," I said. "And I can do it in a couple of days if I'm careful with my time."

"That's...impressive."

"Bakuda was the best bomb maker of the modern age," I said. "Which makes me even better, because I'm not psychotic."

I didn't think I was anyway. Would a psychotic know they were? I wasn't sure.

"How will you even find them?"

"Tattletale owes me," I glowered. "She did workups for all the villain groups in town for Coil, and Uber and Leet have worked for Coil in the past, which means that she knows how to contact them."

"I guess I'll have to take a couple of more days off," he said.

"I might have to implant a bomb in you," I mused. "After all, she might come after you when you are in the bath or in bed; Sophia wouldn't care about something like that."

"You are not implanting a bomb in me," Dad said, I felt unreasonably. This was something that would save his life. There was no way to know how much of a monster Sophia had become, either mentally or physically. Even worse, no one seemed to know anything about her powers except that she seemed to be a living shadow of some sort.

"It won't hurt," I promised, possibly a little disingenuously. "With Othalla's power there won't even be a scar."

"You don't have a medical degree," he said. "You haven't even had anything more than that one CPR course."

"Bakuda was performing brain surgery, and she was a political science major!" I protested.

"There has to be another way," he said.

"Do you want me to let you stay in a PRT safehouse?" I asked. "Like a bird in a cage? They'd use you to control me!"

"Maybe you need to be controlled," he said.

"What?" I asked.

"I saw what you did to those three men," he said. "And you don't even look like you feel bad about it."

"They were planning to murder you in cold blood," I said. "What did you want me to do?"

"You could have made me invulnerable then attacked like you usually do."

"I can't use Othalla's power in Mist form," I said. "The minute that I appeared there was a chance they'd fire."

"And with all your powers you can't stop three normals with guns?"

"Not when they are a foot away from you with their fingers on the trigger," I said. "I could have tried to blink you out and I still might not have been fast enough."

"And choking them was any safer?" he asked incredulously. "What if one of them had pulled the trigger while they were gasping for breath?"

"There are risks," I admitted. "But I didn't see anything at the time that would get you out safe."

"You aren't trained," he said. "You are bright and you have this array of amazing abilities, but I'm afraid that you're going to start making mistakes that get people killed if you don't slow down and think about what you are doing."

"I've cleared out an entire city and I haven't even been doing this for three months," I protested. "How much better do you want me to do?"

"I just don't want you having regrets," he said. "Things you might be ok with now may come back to haunt you later."

The PRT had to know that I'd killed those men and they were more than willing to sweep it under the rug because it was convenient to have me as an ally. I wasn't surprised.

Dad was just worrying because that was his nature, I guessed.

If he wasn't willing to have an implant, I'd just have to use a sedative bomb that I knew how to make, and I could do it without his knowledge. With Othalla's power he'd never even know it had been done.

Sometimes parents had to be protected whether they liked it or not.

After exploring their base through the mirror universe, I appeared directly behind Uber and Leet as they were playing video games on their couch.

I was discovering that I had a primitive sort of delight in the theatricality of making people afraid. It was an art form, like creating a horror movie in real life.

Taking Uber's powers was tempting, but I wanted their cooperation, and I didn't want Leet's power at all. I couldn't be sure that it wouldn't combine with my other Tinker powers in ways that I didn't want. Having bombs blow up was what I wanted; being unable to make more than one copy of a bomb without having it blow up in your face was the last thing I needed.

I lit my head on fire and I heard Uber sniff.

"Dude, did you leave something on the stove again?"

"No," Leet said. "I swear I learned my lesson after last time. It's strictly microwave from here out."

"Then why do I smell something burning?"

They turned to look back toward their kitchenette, only to see me crouched down behind the couch, my head at eye level with them.

Leet screamed like a little girl and threw his controller into the air.

Uber leaped off the couch and turned, in a fighting stance I recognized through my stolen pit fighters abilities.

I stood, and I towered over both of them. I have to admit that I'd added three inches to my feet using Hookwolf's powers.

"That's the guy that got everybody," Leet stammered. "You aren't going to get my powers!"

As though I'd want them.

" _YOU HAVE A CHOICE,"_ I said. " _WORK FOR ME."_

"Or?" Uber asked. He seemed much more composed than his partner.

" _OR DON'T,"_ I said. " _YOU WOULD NOT BE HAPPY WITH THAT OPTION_."

"What would we have to do?" Uber asked.

Leet was fumbling with a gadget on his belt. I moved as quickly as I could with the enhanced speed of Circus and Cricket and I snatched the device out of his hand. I shoved it into my personal pocket diminsion. They both froze, stunned by my display of speed.

" _I HAVE THE POWERS OF MOST OF THE CAPES IN BROCKTON BAY,_ " I said. " _TWO MORE ARE NOTHING TO TAKE._ "

"What would you want from us?" Uber asked again.

" _YOUR LAB_ ," I said. " _I WOULD TINKER_."

"And what would we get?" Leet asked. "If we worked for you?"

" _PROTECTION,"_ I said. " _FROM THE MONSTER THAT TOOK PARIAN'S BRAIN._ "

"I thought that was you," Leet said. He looked calmer now that we were talking terms. Apparently this was old hat to him. "You know, there are a lot of horror themed videos we could do if we had help from someone with a lot of powers."

Before I'd come I'd spent thirty minutes draining the ability to sense motives from several lawyers in Alan Barnes' law firm. It was petty, but I still blamed them for letting him do the things he'd done to me. I hadn't taken anything permanently, but I needed the skills.

It was important to know whether I'd be able to trust these two clowns. I didn't have any powers that would make tinkering easier, but Uber had a lot of experience working with Tinkers, and he could use his abilities to gain skills in mechanics and the like.

" _I MIGHT HELP,_ " I said. " _BUT NOT IN THIS FORM."_

No one was going to make a mockery of Vengeance if I could help it. The last thing I needed was being made into a low budget Skeletor.

" _WILL YOU ACCEPT_?"

They looked at each other, then at me. They stepped toward each other and conferred in low voices, unaware that I was hearing everything they were saying.

"We'll have to accept." Leet said.

I allowed myself to shrink into a version of my Gamble form, except with a metal outfit instead of white leather.

"I think this will be the beginning of a beautiful friendship," I said, smiling with all of five lawyer's skill.

At last I had minions. I fought the urge to laugh maniacally and had to remind myself that I was going to be a hero.

Hopefully they weren't the idiots they portrayed themselves as on YouTube.


	43. Future

Surprisingly, neither Uber nor Leet were actually idiots. They reminded me in a way of Greg Vedar, socially stunted, although neither of them had the creep factor that had always made me uncomfortable around them.

As it turned out both of them made excellent assistants. Most Tinkers weren't any good at all in Tinkering outside their fields, but Leet's field was _everything_. That meant that even if he couldn't build something himself because he'd built something too similar in the past, he was more than capable of understanding it and more than capable of knowing the best ways to help.

My time table for creating the bombs thus turned out to be pessimistic, as I hadn't taken into account just how much easier they could make things.

When I told them the purpose of the bombs, they both decided that they wanted them. They'd heard about what had happened to Parian and Rune and New Wave, and as independent capes they knew they were next on the chopping block. They didn't even have any of Dad's silly objections to having them implanted, once Leet checked my work.

Gabriel would get around to the Protectorate sooner or later, but most likely he'd wait until he thought they were vulnerable and then take a lot of them. He had to be somewhat cautious because if he got caught the Triumverate could be to Brockton Bay in a relatively short time. I wasn't sure whether he had teleportation or anything similar, but if he didn't it meant he'd need to be even more cautious. The PRT had tactics to use against shapechangers after all.

Making three or more of them didn't take much more time than making one. Most of the time was spent setting up the tools. I caught Leet looking enviously at me once or twice; it had to gall him that I could mass produce bombs when he could only make one reliably.

I discussed my idea for a teleporting motorcycle with Leet while I worked as well. My pocket dimension wasn't quite big enough to hold an entire motorcycle, not and hold the other things I was going to want to hold.

He liked the idea, and admitted that he hadn't done anything similar. He did keep pestering me about my alternate self's similarity to an old comic book character; I insisted that it was entirely a result of the powers I'd gotten. Once I saw the pictures he showed me from online I had to admit that I liked the look.

I still wasn't able to create a full skull with biokinisis; I had to have some flesh over my bones. I could make a metal skull with Hookwolf's powers though. Both of the boys approved.

Given my ability to make bombs, Leet insisted on telling me about a Spider man villain who flew around on a mechanical glider. I had to admit to him that I'd seen the Earth Aleph movie. I wasn't certain that making bombs in the shape of pumpkins would be particularly scary...or at least not scarier than just throwing bombs.

Still, with my pocket dimension I could hold a lot of bombs and I fully intended to use that. I still hadn't managed to get any blasters, other than Stormtiger, and with his wind ability I'd be able to project bombs a much greater distance than I could throw them...and I could throw them a long way. Using Rune's telekinisis I could even make a bomb into a homing missile.

I was going to have to fight Leviathan and Gabriel and I felt I would need every advantage that I could get.

Telling the boys about the upcoming attack by Leviathan was enough to cement their loyalty, or at least my fading ability to sense motives told me. This was their city too and they wanted to keep it safe.

"We're going to need money if you plan to keep this up," Leet said. "Tinkering isn't cheap."

"And working on a You Tuber's salary doesn't pay nearly enough for the kinds of things you'll be doing."

I frowned at them. They were right, of course. I'd been working off the materials I'd found in Leet's lab, but the raw materials were running out rapidly and soon we'd need to find other sources. I had ideas for all kinds of exotic bombs, but some of them would require rare materials that couldn't just be found out of a junkyard.

If I'd been a different kind of Tinker I'd have built a matter transmuter, maybe turned seawater into all kinds of useful materials. However, I didn't have those kinds of skills, and Leet says building one of those had been the first thing he did. He'd lost the machine a long time ago, and building another was out of the question.

You didn't build an unstable matter transmuter. Even I knew that was a supremely bad idea. Turning water into antimatter was a good way to destroy most of North America. A single teaspoon would be the equivalent of a four megaton nuclear weapon once it touched matter, and I'd be dealing in tens of kilograms.

Thinking over the powers I had, I wasn't sure any of them could easily be turned to making money. I could use my fire to run a generator, but that would be a supreme waste of my time...and Rune's power would be much more efficient at that anyway.

I could probably sell Othala's regeneration to people, but Brockton Bay residents had gotten used to Panacea providing healing for free. They might be resistant to the idea, thinking she could be back any time, even though I knew she probably wasn't coming back until the Gabriel situation was resolved and maybe not even then.

Still, there would be resistance at first until people were sure that my healing was safe, and I wasn't sure we had that kind of time.

With the PRT putting pressure on the gangs, the normal method of getting money wasn't going to pan out either. The drug trade in the city had been thankfully disrupted, enough that I'd heard reports of addicts who were detoxing from a lack of the drugs swamping the hospitals.

I thought about it for a long moment, and then I had an evil thought.

"There's someone who owes me a lot," I said. I gave Leet an evil grin. "I don't think money is going to be a problem."

Unsurprisingly Tattletale didn't balk at arranging for me to have a bank account with ten million dollars in it. As a minor I ordinarily would need my father's permission to set up an account, but Cape Law was a little different and she was using someone called the Number man, who I suspected wasn't exactly on the up and up anyway.

The fact that I could have outed her to the PRT and they'd have made her give up all of her ill gotten money probably factored into her quick decision. The fact that I was still angry at her and could simply pop up behind her at any time and rip the powers right out of her head probably factored into it as well.

However, I'd told her about the upcoming Leviathan attack and she had as much of an interest in avoiding it as I did. After all, she was creating a relationship with the PRT here and her teammates were still here.

She admitted that she was trying to get her teammates into the Wards. Apparently one of them had custody issues she thought they could help him with and another had legal issues, The last was the only one she thought would be resistant.

Other than Uber and Leet, and Faultline's crew, they were the last of the remaining independents in Brockton Bay, although Tattletale told me that the Empire had a new trigger.

I wondered if I'd had something to do with that. After all, I'd been going around terrifying Empire thugs right and left. I'd seen more than one wet himself. By any definition I had been giving them a bad day. Yet I wasn't going to feel bad about it. After all, they'd spent their entire criminal careers giving everyone around them a bad day.

When I got time I'd get around to tracking whoever this new cape was down and I'd take care of him, assuming the Protectorate or the PRT didn't get to him first.

Of course, if he had a highly desirable power I might choose to put him to the top of the list. After all, a good Master, Blaster or Thinker was worth his weight in gold.

Still, I thought I could trust Uber and Leet to do some of the shopping for me if I transferred money to a special account for them. When they saw the amount I was allotting their eyes widened comically. I generously agreed to let them have any leftover materials, although they'd have to give me the change.

Leet seemed happier than he had been all day.

The fact that Coil's money would finally be used for something that was actually good for the city was an added plus.

I was less pleased when Tattletale told me that Coil had already escaped the PRT. Apparently he had simply vanished from a locked room when the lights had gone off. She didn't think that he had escaped on his own, but she also didn't think that Coil had become one of Gabriel's victims. It didn't fit his profile. Gabriel would have left the brainless body like a proud trophy instead of hiding it.

Of course, it was possible that he wanted to hide his involvement from the PRT, but all this was going to do was put the entire organization on high alert.

I'd just finished implanting the bomb in Uber's neck with Leet supervising; Leet had gone first with Uber taking on medical skills to work as my second and with no bad effects so far Uber had followed. Othalla's regeneration made it all painless and I was happy to have had two subjects to practice with before I worked on Dad.

The knock at the door was unexpected.

I glanced at Leet. "Are we expecting anyone?"

"We're on a boat," Leet said, grimacing. "Who could possibly be knocking?"

He grabed a remote, and the paused video game screen on their big screen television switched to multiple views of the outside; they'd installed unobtrusive security cameras everywhere.

A brown haired man stood outside. He looked like he'd been crying. He had a leather portfolio clutched tightly under his arm.

We glanced at each other and then down at the unconscious form of Uber. This wasn't the best time for visitors, especially since it seemed likely it was a trap.

"We'd better answer it," Leet said. "Before he starts drawing attention."

They had a lot invested in the labs inside the boat. Having to start again was an inconvenience that none of us needed.

I followed him through a maze of hallways. For an instant I thought about appearing behind the man using the mirror universe, but common sense held me back. The last thing I needed was to be using powers within sight of shore. It would bring unwanted attention.

"Can I help you?" Leet asked.

"I need you to take it from me," the man said. He lunged forward and grabbed Leet by the front of his t-shirt. "They told me that you could!"

"Dude, back off!" Leet said, shoving the man back a little. "Who told you we could take what?"

The man glanced around and said "People gave me powers, but they're bad. They sent me here. They said you could make better use of them than me."

Who knew I was here, I wondered. I'd had some inkling about people selling powers, but this was the first person I'd met who might actually know something about it and be able to tell me what I needed to know.

Leet stepped back. "If this is a trick, you'll regret it. We can talk in a cabin right here."

He glanced at me, eyebrow raised as though to ask whether I heard anything. Of course he knew the powers I was suspected to have; the PHO had been speculating. They didn't know about the fear power, of course, or the mirror universe, or from whom I'd gotten my flames, but otherwise they had a pretty good list.

He probably knew about my enhanced hearing. I listened and I couldn't hear anything unusual; just the sound of the wind and the waves and the homeless people vomiting by the pier.

Sometimes having super senses was more of a curse than a blessing.

I shook my head slightly, and he turned to lead the man down the hallway. I noted that he trusted me to watch his back. Was it because I was a fellow Tinker, or was there something else about me that was making him trust me. I didn't have any trust abilities and it wasn't like I'd stolen anyone's charisma or leadership skills...although to think about it that might be something I'd need to look into.

Maybe there were some cult leaders I could skim off of in prison. It might be useful, being able to manipulate people into following me. If I couldn't find them I'd take ex-politicians. It would have the added benefit of keeping them from getting back into office.

When we reached a small cabin, Leet stepped into the room and waited for the man, who followed willingly.

"Ok," he said. "What is this all about?"

"I wanted to be a hero," the man said. He stared down at the leather portfolio he was carrying. "And there were rumors that there were people who could make it happen. It wasn't easy finding them, and they tried to convince me that it wasn't for me, but I went ahead anyway. Now I wish I hadn't."

From what he'd been saying before, he wanted me to take his power. If he had some kind of freaky lizard tail I was going to have to refuse.

"What power did you get?" Leet asked. I wasn't sure whether he was just really good at hiding his surprise at people selling powers or if he'd heard about it already from somewhere.

"I draw the future," the man said. "If that was all it was, I'd be disappointed, but I could deal. The PRT could probably use me in a non-combat capacity. The problem is that I experience what I'm drawing, and the future isn't good."

There was a dilapidated conference table pushed up against the wall. The man walked over to it and set his portfolio down. Dust and mold billowed up and I used Stormtiger's winds to blow the smell subtly away from me instead toward me.

Opening the portfolio, the man began to pull out papers.

These were similar to the paper Gabriel had shown me, except the art style was different. Instead of being drawn like a cartoon, this was drawn in a highly realistic style, with the expressions of terror on people's faces highly visible.

Done in colored pencil instead of black and white like Gabriel's, these were vivid and disturbing. Scene after scene of dead Protectorate members lying before Leviathan, of an Endbringer shelter cracked open and the bodies of the dead piled as high as the eye could see.

I'd known that Endbringer attacks were bad, but I hadn't realized that the devastation was as bad as I was seeing here. I suspected that the media probably downplayed the devastation in order to keep people from losing hope and falling prey to despair.

But there were other pictures as well. Pictures of glass shattering, cutting people to pieces, of a monstrous worm thing, and of a horribly familiar striped figure in the distance. The background was definitely that of the Bay.

"I don't even have a timeline or know what order any of these things are going to happen in," the man said. "But the one thing I know is that I'm going to be tormented by these visions until I get rid of them, one way or another."

"The Slaughterhouse is coming to the Bay," Leet breathed, his face having drained of all color.

"What?" I heard Uber say. He'd apparently recovered from his surgery. "Don't even joke about that."

"This guy is a precog," Leet said. "He says he can precog Endbringers and other stuff."

I was flipping through the pages faster and faster. There were a lot of them.

"Why is everyone fighting Scion?" I asked. "Why am I fighting Scion?"

"Everybody thinks he's good," the man said. His eyes were red and his face was pale. "But he's worse than the Endbringers...a lot worse. He's going to end the world."

The pictures I was looking at now made the Leviathan attack look like child's play. It looked like the very definition of hell. Uber and Leet were looking over my shoulder, and I was glad that I'd remembered to make them immune to setting each other's bombs off.

"Dude, nobody can predict Endbringers," Uber said. "If they could, somebody would have done it already."

I pulled out the next picture and I froze.

There were a series of pictures; of this boat, of the man boarding the boat, of him knocking at the door, and of us answering the door. I was wearing the exact clothes in the picture that I now had on. So was Leet. His expression was even right.

"Is this how you found us?" I asked.

He nodded. "They didn't even have to tell me. They made copies of all my pictures though, so they probably know."

I pulled out the next page and I froze.

There was an intricately drawn picture of all of us in this very room. A word balloon was over Uber's head saying exactly "Dude, nobody can predict Endbringers. If they could, somebody would have done it already."

Wordlessly I handed the paper to Uber, who turned white as a sheet.

Precogs weren't that accurate. If this guy was, then that meant that it was possible that the other things he was showing us was legitimate too.

"You don't have any freaky deformities?" I asked the man.

He shook his head.

If the man was right, then I was going to need every advantage that I could get if I was going to help save everyone.

"You wanted me to take it from you?" I asked.

He nodded.

I held out my hand. "Deal."


	44. Pictures

When I'd gotten the power to gain strength from fear, I hadn't had much experience taking powers. I'd known that power was somewhat different, but I hadn't been exactly sure how. Now that I'd taken twenty different powers I had a much better idea.

This power was clean, which made all the other powers I'd taken seem tainted somehow by comparison. I wasn't sure I understood the distinction even now, but there was something distinctly wrong about the normal powers I'd gained.

He stared at me for a moment, then flexed his hand.

"Is it gone?" he asked.

"You can't tell?"

He shook his head.

I hesitated. "Do you know if the things you see are things that must be, or only things that might be?"

"The guys I got the powers from tell me that things can change...but only as a result of what you do to change them. You do nothing and everything will turn out exactly the way it is written."

"Your power is gone," I said. I could feel it, shining brightly among all the other darker powers. "I'll be keeping the pictures, by the way."

Nodding, he sighed.

"What are you going to do, man?" Leet asked him.

"I'm going to take my family and find a place in the mountains, as far from anybody else that I can find," he said. "And I'm going to hole up and wait for the end."

"I thought you wanted to be a hero," Leet said.

"I'm not cut out for it," he said. "I couldn't even take a few visions, how would I react when the real thing starts happening?"

"Do you need help getting back?" I asked.

He shook his head. "I've got a rowboat, and I've got a car waiting on the docks."

A moment later he was gone.

Uber was flipping obsessively through the pages. "This can't be happening."

"I told you Leviathan was coming," I said. "That makes two precogs who are saying the same thing. What does that tell you?"

"We need to get these to the Protectorate," Leet said. "They need to know what's going to happen."

"Copies," I said. "Not the last pages, of course. I'd just as soon nobody know we're working together until we have to."

"Ashamed to be working with the geek squad?" Leet asked.

"Anyone they know they can target becomes a liability to me," I said. "That includes Gabriel, the former Shadow Stalker and even the Protectorate."

"Uh...wait...Shadow Stalker?" Leet stared at me.

"I knew her in her personal life," I said. "She was my first victim. I hardly even bother to use her powers now since I've got better. It sounds like she's got better too, and she's going after the people she feels betrayed her. She's already killed the Winslow school principal and kidnapped a classmate."

"Great...more crazy capes," Uber muttered. "She wasn't exactly the most stable cape before. I've heard stories about her and her crossbow..."

"She beheaded her school principal," I said, interrupting him. "And cut off her classmate's ears. There's a reason that I gave you the implants, and Gabriel wasn't the only one."

"You've got to keep us in the loop about these kinds of things," Leet said. "Knowing you're being stalked by two crazed serial killers might be a nice thing to know before we sign up with you."

"We're going to save the world or die trying," I said.

"What are the other options?" Leet asked.

"Die...not trying?"

"When you put it like that..." Leet scowled. "This wasn't what we got into all this for, you know? We just wanted people to watch our show. Getting involved with Endbringers and the Slaughterhouse is way above our paygrade."

"Who's left if not you?" I asked. I pointed to the papers, "You can see what's going to happen to the Protectorate if nobody does anything, and the man said that nothing would change if we don't do anything."

"Maybe they can do something different if they see the pictures," Leet said.

I stared down at the table and shook my head. "Maybe. I'm not sure how much help these are going to be. You can see who dies, and sometimes you can even see what kinds of wounds they have, but mostly you can't see exactly what happened...except for this one."

Both men grimaced and looked away. Even as just a picture it was gruesome.

"He said that whoever gave him the powers have copies of the pictures," Uber said. "Does that mean that we need to move?"

I scowled. "How long would it take?"

"Longer than we have," Leet said. "Look at the pictures."

He pointed to various places. "Look at the trees. It's still springtime. The trees are different in the summer and fall and winter."

"It could be next year," Uber said.

"Do you really think that?" Leet asked. "Look at Vista in that picture. You think she wouldn't have filled out more in a year?"

"Dude...not cool," Uber aid.

He had a point, though. Even though I was hardly the most voluptuous girl, a year had made a huge difference in my development, especially at Vista's age.

"If it's still spring," I said slowly, "Then that means that it could happen tomorrow, or we might have two more months. Either way, we don't really have time to move the lab."

The thought of building a really huge engine and moving the entire ship appealed to me on a visceral level, but I definitely didn't have time for that, even if I knew of a few ways to make a ship really cool. The idea of a flaming hell-ship really appealed to me for some reason.

"Then you need to get these to the Protectorate," Leet said firmly. "They've got a lot of thinkers, and even if most of them aren't all that great, together they can do a lot."

I nodded grimly. "I'll get rid of the ones that show the ship."

They nodded. "Thanks for that. I don't think I could get a lot done with Armsmaster looking over my shoulder."

"It looks like we're going to need a lot of bombs," I said. "A _lot_ of bombs. If the Slaughterhouse is coming, they've got a guy who can negate powers, and I'd like to have some weapons that can help me fight him even if nothing else is working."

Leet scowled. "We can do a lot of the prep work, but I don't think I'd better build any bombs myself. Things tend to go sideways when I do."

"Buy the materials and get things set up for mass production," I said. "Do you guys have a color copier?"

They nodded. Of course they did. They probably used it to reproduce fan posters or something.

"I'll get these to people who can use them," I said.

Sitting across the table from me, Armsmaster and Miss Milita stared at me. Emily Piggot turned out not to have been as fat as I'd heard people say online, although she was running to seed.

"You've avoided talking to us for all this time," she said. "Why talk to us now?"

"I recently acquired these from someone I believe to be a precog of great power," I said. "There were other...private pictures that showed the future in great detail and these match pictures from a second precog that I spoke to."

"For someone who claims not to be a parahuman you seem to know a lot of people with powers," Piggot said dryly. "You know that we know about at least three of your identities already."

"If I had a lawyer here, he'd tell me that you have no proof of any of them," I said smoothly. I would have drained Alan Barnes before this meeting, but he was apparently in a psychiatric hospital after having his daughter's ears found in a friend's bathroom.

"We could argue that," Piggot said. "And given your other identities'...propensity for stealing the powers of others, am I to assume you now have this precog's power?"

I shrugged. "I may be able to get more pictures. Considering what's about to happen though, I think we're going to need to work together."

"Whoever you are doesn't matter," Miss Militia said. "What matters are if the pictures are the genuine article. Can you show them to us?"

I handed the pictures over. I'd put them in a kind of an order, although I wasn't sure what order everything was going to happen in.

"Do you know the order?" Armsmaster asked, staring at the pictures.

I shook my head. "There's an obvious progression for some of the events, but there's no way of telling whether the Slaughterhouse will show up before or after Leviathan."

"I'm disturbed by the idea that we'll end up fighting Scion," Piggot said. "That seems...unlikely...and it calls into question the veracity of these other pictures."

"According to the man I got these from, Scion is actually the last and worst of the Endbringers," I said.

It wasn't exactly what he'd told me, but it was basically the idea. He was going to end the world in ways they couldn't, and much faster.

"Clearly the Scion attack is the last in the sequence," Armsmaster said. "Buildings aren't left standing that are still present during Leviathan's attack."

"Still...how do we know that it's true?" Piggot said.

"Can we afford not to believe it?" I asked. "If Leviathan and the Slaughterhouse are coming, we can prepare for that. With these pictures we even know who is likely to fall. Everything in the pictures can be changed."

"It could be a trap," Armsmaster pointed out.

I'd been waiting for him to say that.

I pulled out a last picture from the bottom of the pile. I hadn't wanted to wait before trying my new powers, and what I'd got was an image of the place we were in now. They'd changed the rooms at the last minute because a meeting had run long in the room we were going to take.

They stared at the picture I'd made. Apparently the drawing skill came with the talent, because the picture looked to be in the same style as the others.

I gave them another picture. It showed Velocity opening the door and saying, "Sorry to interrupt, but Director Costa Brown is on the telephone."

They stared at the picture for a long moment.

The door opened and Velocity leaned in. "Sorry to interrupt, but Director Costa Brown is on the phone."

Piggot stared at the picture for a long moment, then sighed. "We've got to accept that this may be a real premonition. We have to take it seriously."

What did she want...winning lottery numbers?

For a moment I wondered if I could actually produce winning lottery numbers, but I knew it was unlikely. The man hadn't told me that drawing the pictures happened in a trance, nor that I wouldn't have any control over what I saw in the future.

This power was far more powerful and detailed than any other precognitive power that I'd ever heard of other than maybe Coil's. Of course it had limitations. All powers did.

"Can we take these?" Miss Militia asked as Piggot rose to go take her telephone call. "We've got a new Thinker that might be able to learn a lot more from these."

I'd already got Tattletale's promise that anything she gleaned from these she'd tell me. Given how important it was, I doubted that she'd try to betray me.

"These are copies," I said. "Feel free to take them."

Miss Militia hesitated. "I still think we should work more closely together. I'm not sure why you are still denying who you are."

"It's a polite fiction," I said smoothly. "That lets me live like an ordinary people. Maybe I'm who you say I am...maybe I'm not. You know I'm not an ordinary girl and that's enough."

I'd committed murders in some of my identities. Admitting to who I was was tantamount to admitting that I'd done those murders. I wasn't arrogant enough to believe that I was invincible. For all I knew the Protectorate kept Masters in secret to deal with people who couldn't be dealt with in any other way.

Waking up in the Birdcage because I'd gotten overconfident wasn't something I wanted to see happen. I suspected that I'd be able to escape eventually, at least once I'd drained everyone in the place, but there were things I had to do in the meantime and I didn't have time to worry about playing escape from Alcatraz.

I might even have enough powers to escape from the Birdcage now, between the mirror universe, Shadow Stalker's power and my ability to turn into a fog and use biokinesis to survive a vaccuum for a period of time.

"The important thing is that I have access to further insights from the future," I said. "And that these seem to be more detailed than the usual."

"If this precog of yours is able to predict Endbringers reliably, it'll be a game changer," Miss Militia said soberly. "Being able to know which city they are likely to strike next and when would give us a chance to evacuate in advance. It would save the lives of thousands of people."

I knew that, of course, and the man who'd given up the power should have known that. He'd said he wanted to be a hero, but when push came to shove he'd run away rather than face things he didn't want to deal with.

He could have been celebrated as the greatest hero since...well, Hero, but instead he was running off to hide in a shack somewhere waiting for the end to come.

I couldn't understand that. Being a hero was all about having the power to make a difference. Seeing a horrible future only made me want to work harder to change it. The future was not set in stone, and if it could change all that meant was that you had to find the one path that led to the .00001 percent chance of victory.

"Is the girl...Dinah doing OK?" I asked.

If I wasn't Vengeance I shouldn't know anything about her, but we were maintaining only a polite fiction.

"She's apparently almost as good a precog as your friend, but her ability causes debilitating headaches," Miss Militia said. "Which is why we not have her in a medically supervised detox program."

"I hope she gets better," I said. I frowned. "Does she consider her ability a blessing or a curse?"

"I'm sure she's not ready to have someone snatch it away from her in the middle of the night," Miss Militia said dryly. I could see from the way she was looking at me that she didn't believe the precog still had his powers.

I'm not sure why this offended me a little, even though I had actually eaten his powers. Maybe it was the principal of the thing.

"The man I got the pictures from didn't consider the power much of a gift," I said, truthfully. "He was tormented by what he saw in the future and he felt that it was hopeless. He thought that Scion was leagues beyond any of the Endbringers and that nothing we did would ever make a difference."

"Some people think the same thing about the Endbringers," Miss Militia said. "But if we just lay down and give up, where would we be? It can feel futile to fight them, but at the end of the day we are all there to save lives, and we do. Because we lay our lives down, hundreds or thousands of people don't die. Some of those people may be the one who triggers with the right power, or the one who has the idea that no one has thought of yet."

"Assuming Mannequin doesn't get them," I said sourly. "There are people who need to be taken out before we even get to the Endbringers."

The Slaughterhouse Nine, the Teeth, other monsters in human form. The unfair thing was that they had better powers than the heroes as a rule, presumably because if they didn't they'd have already been caught.

"You may have given us the clue that helps make that happen," Miss Militia said. "If our thinker can narrow the time and place that the Slaughterhouse arrives, then we can be waiting from them. We might have a chance of actually making a difference for once instead of always playing catch up."

The power might even give me leads on Sophia or Gabriel. The unfortunate thing about Gabriel was that he had his own version of the power, which meant that it might devolve into a constant game of one upsmanship between us.

"Leviathan is coming," I said. "And so is the Nine. If any villains were left in town, I'm sure they would have been willing to work against those things invading our town."

"And you didn't have anything to do with the lack of villains in town?" Miss Militia asked.

I shrugged. "Now's not the time to assign blame. We just have to work together."

"We'll keep you in the loop," she said.

Somehow I didn't even need any stolen ability to sense deceit to know that she was lying. They'd take the information I'd given them and do whatever they did with it, and they'd do their best to cut me out of the loop unless they thought they could use me.

As far as I knew, though, they didn't know about my connection to Tattletale, who had promised she _would_ keep me in the loop.

For now I had to get back to building bombs and a little non-elective surgery on Dad when he wasn't looking. Maybe someday people would learn to trust me.


	45. Skills

Knowing that the time frame was as tight as it was, I knew that I had to up my game. I needed plans to deal with the Slaughterhouse and with Leviathan, and I needed to implement them before either of them got to Brockton Bay.

I'd been dithering about stealing skills because despite all the justifications I made for myself, it was a deeply unethical violation of a person. Stealing skills from Alzheimer's patients would make me as bad as Victor had been, maybe even worse.

Returning to the ship, I confronted Uber.

"Are you sure that this won't leave me a drooling vegetable?" Uber asked.

"It's only permanent if I take too much," I said. "And all I need to do is take a little to see if it will work at all."

Getting skills from Uber would be the least unethical thing I could do, all things considered, and considering that he could access any skill under the sun, it wouldn't take me long to be an expert at everything...and I suspected that I was going to need to be.

"What should we start with?" he asked.

"Um...pick a skill that you normally don't have. I don't want to mistake your regular skills for manufactured and end up draining you."

"That would be bad," Uber said. He thought for a moment. "I've never done ballet dancing."

"That'll work," I said.

Even if it wasn't anything I needed it would be perfect for practice, and I had a sudden image of myself as Vengeance ballet dancing in front of the Slaughterhouse. I suspected that would make even them stop and stare.

He concentrated for a moment then said "I've got it."

Bowing to me, he started spinning around the room. Considering that dancers usually had special shoes he was very talented suddenly.

I reached out with Victor's power, and it was like grasping at the air. There was simply nothing there. I could feel his other skills, the ones had had during his day to day life, but the dancing might as well not have existed.

"Shit," I muttered. "It's not going to work."

He stopped and stared at me. "I'm not sure I'm unhappy with that. What would have happened if you'd taken a skill permanently and I didn't get it back?"

That would have been a waste. It would have been much better to have simply taken his ability to have all skills and be done with it.

He looked at me sharply, as though he could tell what I was thinking. Holding up his hands he said "I can still be useful to you even without all of that."

"Everybody's going to need to be useful," I said. "Given what's coming."

I was going to have to find another solution, and it was going to involve getting my hands dirty. I didn't like it, but these were the kinds of decisions that were going to keep people alive.

It did mean that my desire for trivial skills was going to have to go by the wayside. There wasn't any need to steal someone's videogame skills just so I could beat Leet. (Uber would cheat, I suspected if he knew I was using powers anyway.)

I'd have to focus on the ability to read body language, on charisma and leadership, on combat skills and stealth. Computer skills might be helpful, although Uber and Leet both had those, as did Tattletale. There would probably be other skills that I didn't even know I needed until it was too late.

Grabbing my cellphone, I dialed a number quickly.

"Tattletale," I said. "Can you talk?"

Tattletale was amazingly good at what she did.

I doubted that I'd have been able to find a list of convicts with the skill sets that I wanted, much less have found the exact cells they were in.

My initial idea to go after death row inmates had quickly been nixed by Tattletale. There was only one death row inmate in New Hampshire and none of the other states in the region even had the death penalty. That one inmate was considered not very bright anyway and wasn't likely to have any skills I would need.

There were, however men who had life without parole. Child molesters, cult leaders, multiple murderers...all of them people who would be dangerous to society if they were left with their skills and somehow managed to get out again.

I wasn't completely sure, but I couldn't see any better alternatives. Stealing from Alzheimer's patients seemed unnecessarily cruel, especially since they were unlikely to have any of the skills I most desperately needed.

For this operation I decided not to use any of my established identities. The last thing I needed to do was to antagonize the Protectorate when I was needing their cooperation. So I bought a full black bodysuit, put on a ski mask and I rode a stolen motorcycle the sixty miles to Lancaster to get to the prison.

It wasn't easy to find. It was a maximum security prison and was one of the most technologically advanced prisons in the United States, at least of those that didn't deal with parahumans.

The men here needed that kind of security, which meant they were exactly the kind of men I needed.

The mirror universe was perfect for scouting the prison in advance. The last thing I needed was any surprises. I had changed my face under the ski mask just in case something awkward happened.

Then it was simply a matter of waiting until three in the morning. I spent the time making paintings; it was an excellent way to make time fly, since I wasn't generally aware of the passage of time when I was making the paintings. Slipping the art supplies and the finished paintings into my personal pocket dimension, I left the mirror version of the Warden's office, and I slipped through the mirrored halls.

There were metal doors, but without electricity Shadow Stalker's power meant that they didn't hinder me at all. The sensors didn't detect me in another universe, and the guards didn't see me.

Reaching the first of the cells, I purposefully touched my outfit. I'd improvised a series of belts to hold me up while my order for another four flying harnesses was filled in Boston. As I reached the cell and shadowed through the door, I floated up to the ceiling.

My eyes were cat like slits and I could see in the darkness. As two men appeared on the beds below me, I stared at both of them intently, checking the pictures I'd brought with me. I'd have used my cell phone, but I'd been afraid the light would wake someone.

The last thing I wanted to do was drain the wrong man.

This was him all right. Aaron Phelps...he'd started a cult worshipping the Endbringers, one that didn't involve the Teeth. He'd molested girls and women in his congregation, had some of his followers forcibly castrated, and he'd been involved in fourteen murders. He'd tried to order a hit on a Federal Judge.

There was little chance he was ever going to get out, and he was a perfect first victim.

I wasn't certain I wanted anything from someone like this, someone who made the Nazis in Brockton Bay seem almost reasonable by comparison, but I needed to start somewhere, and he was the worst of the group Tattletale had given me.

I stared at him from my position on the ceiling, and I wondered what he'd see if he opened his eyes. Would he see a dark figure lurking in the darkness, looming over him and staring at him?

Fortunately he didn't wake, and it only took me twenty minutes to get what I needed.

I slipped into the mirror universe, and I began moving again. Hopefully the entire night would go like this. There were a total of five men in this prison who had skills I needed, and with any luck I'd be home before Dad even noticed that I was gone.

He hadn't even noticed when I'd implanted the bomb in the middle of his back. It was in a place he couldn't easily reach with his hands and so he was unlikely to notice the small lump it left. He would still be vulnerable to normal people, but the possibility of being killed by a random thug existed for everyone.

The second man wasn't any more difficult than the first. He was a mixed martial artist who had been sentenced to life in prison for kidnapping, beating and sexually assaulting an ex-girlfriend and attacking her male friend. He might be eligible for parole in his seventies, but I doubted he'd need his combat skills by then.

Not having them might make his life more difficult while he was on the inside, but I couldn't take that into consideration.

Again I hovered inches from the ceiling, staring down at a man's sleeping form as I drained every last dreg I could of his skills. I was understanding things now that I hadn't before when all I'd had was pit fighting skills. While there were a lot of skills in common, there were other skills that weren't remotely similar.

I could see how this could become addictive. Gaining knowledge and skills without having to go through all the grueling work. I wondered about the trail of sorrow Victor had likely left behind him as he'd stolen powers with considerably less care than I was doing. Had he primarily stolen from black and Asian people, or had his Nazi ideologies made him refuse to take 'tainted' skills?

Once I was finished, I moved on to the third man. Prison was apparently an exhausting experience because the first two men had barely moved at all, except to snore occasionally.

I appeared in the third man's room on the ceiling, only to look down at a man who was looking straight up at me.

He screamed and his roommate was instantly up.

I could hear the sounds of feet rushing down the halls as well as the sounds of other inmates waking up. Scowling under my ski mask, I slipped into the other world. I was clearly done for the night.

There were cameras in the room, but none of them were pointed toward the ceiling, which was why Tattletale had suggested the strategy to me. Without any evidence on camera, there was a chance that prison authorities would think it was a nightmare, at least until the MMA fighter got into a fight that he was suddenly unable to win.

By that time I would be long gone, and without any evidence that I'd been involved there wouldn't be any reason for the Protectorate to get involved.

Hopefully what I'd gotten would be enough to help me. The third man had been a criminal lawyer... not a defense attorney, but an actual lawyer who was a criminal. Having legal skills would have probably been highly useful to me, especially if we all survived what was coming and I had to find a way to live afterwards.

Slipping through the mirror universe, I headed for the motorcycle outside. If this was a bust I needed to get home as quickly as I could. There was too many chances that something would happen while I was gone, and some of the visions I'd had were disturbing.

I needed to show them to the Protectorate and Tattletale.

The most disturbing of the lot was a detailed rendering of Jack Slash and Bonesaw standing over the dismembered corpse of a small child. Jack Slash was saying "Three monsters in Brockton Bay...intriguing. How do you feel about a little trip?"

Bonesaw's response wasn't on the page, but her expression said it all.

I had an uneasy feeling that meant that the Slaughterhouse was coming before Leviathan, and if that was the case, it was likely going to be soon.

Pushing my motorcycle to faster speeds, I reminded myself that the new version I was creating needed to be faster than any conventional motorcycle. Part of me kept wanting to add more and more pieces to it to make it loud and proud, even though it probably wasn't the thing I needed to be working on.

What I needed to do was find a Cape who didn't sleep. I'd managed to reduce the amount of sleep I needed by twenty five percent, but I couldn't go any further without working on my brain. Considering that my biokinesis worked largely by trial and error, working on my brain that way would be a terrible mistake.

I wondered if maybe Panacea could have done it if I'd convinced her before she'd left.

As it was, I was going to have to prioritize my time. School was going to have to take a back seat to everything else; every hour I was in class was time I could be building more bombs or gadgets that might mean the difference between lives saved or lost.

Now that Blackwell was dead I could probably get transferred to a home school program. I might even be able to get Tattletale to help me pressure the school into pushing it through.

A light flashing behind me warned me that a police officer was on my tail. I smirked and a moment later I was in the mirror universe.

Even if he'd already noted down my license, they'd go after the original Nazi owners.

As I zoomed down the deserted highway I wondered if I enjoyed breaking the rules so much because power was corrupting me, or because I resented authorities for all the times they'd failed me. Was this my version of teenage rebellion?

I had to reappear into the real world soon enough, but this time my lights were off. I rode that way until I was sure the officer was a long way behind me and then I turned my lights back on. Normally that would be an incredibly dangerous and irresponsible thing to do, but my powers allowed me to hear cars coming even over the roar of the engines.

As I moved into Brockton Bay, I moved silently through the streets. At this hour almost no one was up, not even criminals, and it was possible to go almost anywhere in an incredibly short time.

I switched into the mirror universe as I approached my house, parking in the front of the house in the mirror universe.

As I stepped into the house I felt suddenly uneasy. Something was wrong. I couldn't put my finger on it, but I didn't feel like I was alone. It was impossible, of course; no one was able to enter my mirror universe but me and possibly a clone similar to the one I'd gotten the power from.

The inside of the house was a wreck. It looked like someone had tried to knock the walls down and had punched holes in walls. Furniture was destroyed everywhere, and it looked as though someone had done it all in a rage.

Suddenly panicked I switched into the real world and I saw that it was just as bad or worse.

Dad was standing in the middle of the room, an expression of horror on his face. His whole body was gray, frozen in the time stream exactly as I'd planned. He didn't look like he was injured, but it was apparent that whoever had come after him had been enraged when she couldn't affect him and they'd destroyed everything they could in a rage.

From the look of it they had superhuman strength.

I closed my eyes and listened. I couldn't hear anything but the sound of my own heartbeat and blood rushing through my veins, at least not within my own property.

Reaching for the control on my belt, I pushed a switch.

"DON'T!" Dad shouted. He stared at me for a moment, uncomprehending.

"Who did this?" I asked.

"A monster," he said. "Made out of smoke and fog and darkness."

"Sophia," I scowled. It had to have happened sooner or later. Now wasn't the best time, though. Keeping Dad safe was going to be more difficult if she realized that all she had to do was attack him from a distance and he wouldn't have any kind of defense against it.

It was the kind of defense that worked best when the enemy didn't know that it existed. Once they did, they'd figure out ways to work around it.

"What happened?"

"Remember that little project I was talking about?" I asked. I stared at him.

"The surgery?" he stared back at me and then said slowly, "Why does my back ache between my shoulder blades?"

"It saved your life," I said. "Now we need to get out before..."

I stopped as I saw something suddenly bleeding through the walls. It was a message written in what smelled like blood. While Stormtiger's winds could carry the scent to my nostrils it couldn't let me identify who the blood came from.

I wondered if it was from Emma or from Blackwell.

" _BITCH I'LL FIND YOU AND RIP OUT YOUR EYES."_

"It's not safe to stay here now," I said to him. "We're getting out of here."

Even though I couldn't hear anything or sense any fear, I still felt as though I was being watched. I went with Dad up to his room, but all of his clothes and mine were torn into shreds.

Mom's pictures were gone and so were every sentimental item I had in my room. The savagery with which she'd done it all was telling. Sophia wasn't in her right mind.

I wondered how much was left of her mind at all. Was rage and fury all that was left of her?

As I touched Dad and we slipped into the mirror universe, the feeling of being watched didn't leave me. It made me uncomfortable enough that I didn't head for the movie theater. Instead I headed for Uber and Leet's lair.

I was going to reimplant another bomb in Dad, and maybe some others on top of that. I had an idea for a bomb to replicate Othalla's healing power that I wanted to try.

If Sophia was going to follow us I wanted Dad close.

I lost the sense of being followed halfway there, but that didn't change my mind. For the time being we were going to have to circle the wagons.

She'd destroyed my childhood before she'd even had these new powers, and now she had destroyed the last vestiges of it. After what she'd done to me, to Emma... to my whole school really... there could only be one recourse.

Dad would never be safe as long as she was around. Neither would any friends I made in the future.

For me to have a future I was going to have to end her.


	46. Medusa

You couldn't argue with results.

The boys hadn't been particularly excited to have Dad as an unexpected houseguest, but they couldn't argue when I told them what had happened. I was trusting them quite a lot, knowing the identity of my Dad and they knew it.

They also knew just how vengeful I could get if they abused that trust. I made that quite clear to them and they didn't seem surprised at all.

Sending the new pictures to Tattletale had given us a timeframe; we had less than a week before the Slaughterhouse showed up. She had a list of locations they were likely to end up at at some point, although without the ability to know exactly when it was only of limited usefulness.

I had plans, though. Even as I worked on bombs and my motorcycle I thought about the Slaughterhouse Nine and possible tactics I could use against them. Some I couldn't see any weaknesses for; the Siberian and Crawler would be the most difficult of them all to fight. I might be able to switch them into the mirror universe while I dealt with the others, though.

Bonesaw would either be easy or a nightmare. Leet thought that she might have trapped herself so that if she died a biological plague would be released. He wasn't certain though.

Given her abilities I'd need to take her power and then hope that the plague didn't get me or kill a lot of people before I found a cure. Of course, if it was triggered by her death all I'd have to do was keep her alive and everything would be fine.

Shatterbird I was certain I could take, although the damage she might do to the city in the meantime worried me. Having the boys take measures to protect the lab had reduced the time we had to build things, but it had to be done. There was enough glass in the lab to shred both of the boys and my Dad before I could do anything.

Mannequin wasn't someone I expected to have much trouble with either. I was fast enough and strong enough to get hold of him, and I doubt his shell counted for Manton limits. Worse come to worse I could always cook his brain alive.

Burnscar didn't worry me at all, although Leet thought her power might have some kind of neurological effect. I might consider avoiding taking it if it did; the last thing the world needed was for me to become a sociopath.

The only two I was worried about, other than the Siberian and Crawler were Hack Job and Jack Slash. Without my powers I'd be limited to gadgets, and while Jack Slash's known power was underwhelming, he'd somehow managed to escape every hero on the continent for decades. He had to have something more.

I could do it, assuming they didn't throw me a curve ball. Unfortunately that was their modus operandi. They specialized in never being where anyone expected and in being unpredictable. They had decades of experience and they had the advantage that morality didn't slow them down at all. If it served them they would do it.

If I continued down this path long enough would I end up like them? I'd already done things that I never thought I'd have done.

I'd stolen people's skills; the one thing that was supposed to be inviolable. I'd taken people's powers; the one reward for going through the worst day imaginable. I'd even caused people to trigger, which meant that I was the one giving them the worst day.

How long would it be before I started justifying taking powers from heroes? If that was what it took to stop Leviathan or Scion would I do it? What if I needed a skill only possessed by someone who was innocent?

When did the end stop justifying the means?

Obsessing over it didn't seem to be doing me any good. It only upset me, especially after my _conversation_ with Dad about the whole surgery thing. He'd been upset, but I'd rather him be upset and alive than dead.

He'd agreed to having more implanted though. Making them without any substance that Shatterbird could affect had been more difficult, and I'd had to retrofit the boys bombs as well, but it was necessary.

Getting the transfer to being homeschooled hadn't been high on my priorities, but Dad had insisted. We'd ended up at the school and for once they hadn't given us any trouble, although the secretary had given me the stink eye.

I suspected that a lot of people in that office were worried that they were going to be next on Sophia's list, and I doubted that the PRT was willing to expend resources trying to protect them all. For some reason I didn't feel a lot of sympathy for them.

If Dad hadn't been there, I'd have given the finger to Winslow as I walked out the doors for the last time. It was a hell hole, and no one there had even lifted a finger to make my life any better. With any luck I'd be rid of all of them for the rest of my life.

"You have to be kidding me," I said flatly.

"I'm the newest Ward!" he said, grinning at me. "Isn't that the coolest thing?"

The voice, the body language, the creepy way he looked at me; the newest Ward was obviously Greg. The thing I didn't understand was how _he'd_ triggered. Did he even leave home often enough to have something bad to him?

Had someone started a flame war with him online and that was all it took?

"What can you do?" I asked.

"Call me Specs," he said. "I have X-Ray vision."

Oh God. My hands involuntarily crossed my chest and I found myself fighting the urge to reach out and grab him.

"Oh, don't worry!" he said. "I don't do that...not to you. They've warned me about what you can do, and you'd probably do something really horrible to me."

I relaxed slightly, then said, "So you do it to other people than me?"

He flushed. "I had to try out my power."

"It doesn't seem very useful...not in a fight," I said. I frowned. Most powers seemed to have some sort of combat application. It was almost like a rule. I lowered my voice. "Did you buy your powers?"

His eyes widened and he took a step back. "N..no. Why would you ask that?"

My newfound skill at reading body language told me all that I needed to know. Whatever power he'd gotten had come from the mysterious people selling powers. Given his limited resources, it might be that X-Ray vision was all he could afford.

I wondered if more money got better powers or if the process was less controlled than that.

Nevertheless, even with a weak power the Protectorate was letting him into the Wards. It was a sign of how desperate they were.

The door behind me opened and Piggot stepped into the room, along with Armsmaster and Miss Militia.

"I see you've met our latest Ward," she said. "While you might have some idea of his civilian identity I would remind you that revealing that to the public is a felony."

I scowled. Who would I even bother to tell?

"We were hoping you'd meet with the other Wards, maybe coordinate with them about what is coming."

They were hoping I'd like them enough to give up all my freedom and join up. My newfound understanding of the meanings behind words made it all very clear.

The fact that they still wanted me made me think less of them. I'd known that they cared more about power than morality from the fact that they'd hired Shadow Stalker, but they most likely had evidence that I'd killed people and they still wanted me.

I forced myself to smile. It was easier now to create the appearance of compliance, to hide my true emotions. Before my emotions would have been like a blinking neon sign to anyone who was paying attention. That was probably part of what had made me so easy to bully. Now, though I could lie, and that was a skill that would be very useful.

"I'm more interested in finding out what your Thinkers have figured out about the timeline and location of the attack."

"We have four days," Armsmaster said. "Unless something changes. The Slaughterhouse should attack in four days time, and we have a list of six locations they are likely to be seen in. Unfortunately, there isn't any way of knowing what order or when those locations will be hit."

"I'm most interested in stopping Shatterbird before she gets a chance to kill and maim hundreds or thousands of people in the city," I said. "I suspect Vengeance can work wonders on the others after that."

"Don't get overconfident," Armsmaster said sharply. "The Slaughterhouse Nine have been operational for decades despite the efforts of heroes all over the country. They are considered a threat only surpassed by the Endbringers, Nilbog and the Sleeper."

"And the last two only maybe," Piggot said sourly. "At least the other two don't move. The Nine show up where they are least wanted and where they can do the most damage."

"Have any of the heroes had advance warning like this or where the Nine will be in advance?" I asked.

Miss Militia spoke. "There have been times the Nine announced themselves in advance. It didn't help."

"Then we'll have to do better," I said. "Priority has to be to reduce the death toll and damage to people, even if it means letting some of them go."

"Every one you let go may mean thousands dead in the future," Armsmaster said.

"The PRT will set priorities as it sees fit," Piggot said firmly. "We will not be dictated to by a vigilante."

I held up my hands and shrugged. "It was just a suggestion. The Bay has suffered enough, and with Leviathan coming it's only going to get worse."

"We won't have many Capes available to fight him this time around either," Piggot said. She looked up and glared at me. "And we all know who's fault that is."

"Fewer Capes will die," I said smoothly. "And maybe a few, stronger capes are better than a lot of weak capes."

"You haven't been in an Endbringer battle," Piggot said. "You don't know what it's like."

She hadn't either; the norms of the world had left fighting Endbringers to the parahumans a long time ago. While I wanted to protest, my new found social skills told me that it wouldn't do my case any good. Piggot clearly didn't like parahumans in general and she had even less respect for teenagers.

A military woman, she doubtlessly would have preferred only people in the military to have powers, assuming anyone had powers at all.

Whining or doing anything that strengthened her view of me as another entitled teenager with more power than sense would only make my position more difficult in the future.

"I'll serve when it's time," I said. "Just like anyone with a conscience would."

"You may want to meet the Wards," Piggot said again.

Her saying that made me feel like I was being relegated to the kiddie table because of my age, even though I was arguably the most powerful Cape in the bay, with only Gabriel as a possible exception.

"Why should I meet with them at all?" I asked. "Isn't a conflict with the Nine the exact kind of thing the Wards _aren't_ supposed to do?"

"When the Nine attack there won't be much of a choice," Piggot said. She scowled. "We're outnumbered here in the Bay...or at least we were, and so the Wards have had to be much more active here than they have been in other cities."

"Child soldiers," I said.

" _No_ ," Miss Militia said sharply. I suddenly remembered that this might be a sensitive subject for her, considered the little that I'd heard of her origins. "The Wards are heroes in training. Things like Endbringer fights and this with the Nine are strictly voluntary."

"That being said, the Wards we have are likely to volunteer for the same reason you will," Armsmaster said. "This is their city and their families at risk. The thought that someone you care about got hurt because you didn't do something... that's more than most heroes can bear. Make no mistake, the Wards are heroes."

It was a much more ringing endorsement than I would have expected from Armsmaster. I could sense that he had little patience for dealing with most of the Wards and that some of them actively annoyed him. He was loyal to them, though.

No wonder the cult leader had such an easy time convincing people; he'd been a master of cold reading. It was a skill used by supposed psychics long before superpowers had actually existed.

"We'll need to coordinate any attacks we make on the Nine," he said. "Which is why you are being invited to the strategy meetings with both the Wards and members of the Protectorate. In the past we would have invited New Wave, but..."

Right.

"For this operation, the Protectorate has authorized funds to hire Faultline's crew," Armsmaster said. "We normally wouldn't resort to using mercenaries, but the circumstances are considered dire enough that it's warranted."

"They'll be considered civilian contractors," Piggot said. "We're hiring them as much to keep the Slaughterhouse from hiring them as for their actual help."

"If they'd work for the Slaughterhouse Nine, shouldn't we take them down now?" I asked.

"The Slaughterhouse is perfectly willing to use intermediaries for boring grunt work, although they prefer to leave the actual killing to themselves."

"So you're afraid Faultline might be used to create distractions." I said.

"There have been...issues between Faultline's crew and Vengeance," Armsmaster said. "Do you think you can work with them?"

"I don't want them to know that the connection between me and Vengeance is any more than my being his representative," I said. "I have no personal grudge against them, but they may have one against me."

I'd failed to get their powers, in part because I'd been focused on the other villains and in part because they were too slippery. However, slippery people were exactly what we needed in the fight against the Slaughterhouse.

Piggot nodded, then looked at her watch. "The meeting is starting in ten minutes. Do you think we can adjourn here?"

I nodded. Talking strategy with the full Protectorate seemed like a very good use of my time.

We all rose and I allowed Piggot to walk out ahead of me, with Armsmaster and Miss Militia lagging behind in the conference room.

Armsmaster spoke into his communicator.

"Operation Medusa is good to go."

I was on alert immediately. Were they planning to try to take me down? Why would they do it now instead of after the Slaughterhouse Nine showed, unless they were afraid I'd get even stronger and harder to beat by then.

"Please don't," Miss Militia said under her breath. She presumably knew about my enhanced hearing and she'd clearly seen me stiffening despite myself.

I was going to have to work on those body language skills. Being surprised apparently made them a little harder to use, or maybe the cult leader had had to think about manipulating people instead of it being natural to him.

"We aren't after _you_ ," she said.

The emphasis told me that they _were_ after someone. Given that I had wiped out most of the villains in the Bay, that meant that the most likely candidate was Gabriel.

If they were after Gabriel in the PRT building, that meant that he was here, and that he had probably replaced someone, either a Cape or a rank and file PRT member, possibly more than one.

If he had access to PRT files, that meant that he had a huge advantage against capes in the city. I suspected that the PRT honored the unspoken rules more in breech than in principle.

I hadn't left many Capes in the city, but there were capes in surrounding cities, Boston primarily that would be just as vulnerable to PRT databases. It would be easy for Gabriel to pick people off in those cities, and if they were independent capes no one might even know they were missing for days.

Had he been getting more powerful while I'd been complacent on the sidelines?

I heard Miss Militia catching up to me. She passed me and ahead I saw the door open to a large conference room.

The entire Protectorate was there, along with at least a dozen PRT agents in full uniform. There was a podium at the end of the room, which Piggot stepped up to.

"We're here to talk about the Slaughterhouse Nine," Piggot said as she entered the room. "Planning and preparation. No idea will be considered too outlandish and everything will be considered. We are here to save lives and for once we have advance warning of what is likely to happen."

Miss Militia stepped up to the podium.

"There are at least six locations they are likely to be at. The Slaughterhouse is likely to scatter at first while they are trying to recruit; that will be our opportunity to take them out before they can work together. Unity is our greatest strength."

As she said that, the small knife in her hand transformed into a massive handgun. She turned in a smooth motion and fired into the side of the woman beside her, shooting ten times in quick succession into the side of Emily Piggot.

The bullets were suspended in mid-air.

Piggot smirked. "Vengeance isn't the only one who has enhanced hearing."

A moment later her face changed, and there was pandemonium.


	47. Battle

He reverted to the face I'd seen before, at the Cafe. Standing before all six members of the Protectorate and all five...no six, Wards and a dozen PRT troopers with containment foam, he didn't seem worried at all.

A small gesture and bullets went everywhere. Two hit Miss Militia in the torso and she stumbled and fell to one knee. Clockblocker and Vista were each hit in the torso once. Triumph was hit twice.

He could have easily placed the bullets in people's heads, but I supposed that he wanted everyone alive so he could take their powers later. The names of the Capes I had taken were largely public record, as were some of my exploits. He probably knew that bullets alone wouldn't be much use against me. The same could be considered of Armsmaster's armor, Aegis's redundant physiology or Gallant's armor. He'd had plenty of time to study everyone's powers and potential weaknesses while playing their boss.

Hitting the unarmored people who were the most dangerous to him was an excellent plan. However, there were still several of us in the room who had not been injured, and I could see Assault and Battery already moving toward him as though she was in slow motion.

With combat pending, my enhanced reflexes had kicked in.

I saw that Armsmaster was already moving toward him. His speed was at the highest possible human level, but it still looked like slow motion to me.

Lunging forward, I reached out with my hand hoping to grab him. He'd already hurt enough people; there was a risk in gaining his Hunger but I was strong enough to resist it; I had to be.

I found myself sliding as the floor beneath me was suddenly covered with ice. I wasn't the only one. Assault and Battery and Armsmaster were all crashing to the floor while I barely managed to keep my feet with the enhanced dexterity I'd gained.

I regained my feet and started to slide toward him, my hand outstretched. One touch and it would all be over.

Before I could reach him though I felt myself flying backwards to crash heavily into a wall. He held me there with one hand outstretched, the telekinisis he'd used to hold me before holding me against the wall.

One of the PRT agents reached him despite sliding, pushing off a wall so that he slid toward Gabriel on his belly. The agent slid into his legs and tried to bring his containment foam sprayer around. Gabriel reached down with the hand that wasn't pointed toward me and the man suddenly started screaming. The scream turned into a gurgle as he shimmered and froze in place. His skin had suddenly turned a golden color along with his clothes and everything else.

None of the other PRT agents were as agile as the first one had been. They stumbled and fell on the ice, some of them accidentally spraying Containment foam that hit Specs and Kid Win, who cursed loudly.

I could feel the fear in the room; unfortunately there weren't enough people to give me much of a boost. Even worse, these people didn't have the same kind of fear civilians would have. They'd been through combat before and even in the face of seemingly unbeatable odds they were able to keep their heads.

Despite the tremendous telekinetic force pinning me to the wall, I was able to move my wrist, pointing my hand in his direction. I lashed out with Stormtiger's claws made out of air, slashes appeared on Gabriel's face and body and he went sliding across the room. The telekinetic force holding me to the wall disappeared.

I wasn't the helpless newbie that he'd held down in an outdoor cafe. I had power now, and I wasn't afraid. Clones appeared around me, all imitations of how I was dressed now. Unlike me, they floated and they launched themselves toward him even as he himself was levitating into the air.

Fangs were starting to appear in my mouth as anger filled me. He was playing us all for fools, as though we were nothing.

As two of my ghosts launched toward him he reached out telekinetically and threw two PRT agents at them. They were forced to stop to save the men even as two other clones continued toward him.

The wounds on his face were healing already. The speed he was healing was incredible, far beyond anything I could do as Lung even at an enhanced level. It was intimidating.

I used Hookwolf's powers to form skates on my feet and I launched myself toward him. I'd skated often enough with Emma during the winters that I probably could have managed it even without enhanced reflexes. With them it was easy. I could have managed even without them but with them I was more graceful and capable of changing directions quickly.

Armsmaster had managed to stumble to his feet and he was skating awkwardly toward Gabriel.

Assault was flying through the air, propelled by a force I couldn't see. He was suddenly suspended in midair, and a moment later he was crashing into Armsmaster.

A forcefield blinked into existence around him as containment foam finally made it's way to him; I wondered which member of New Wave had contributed that power. The containment foam slid right off.

Unfortunately the force field also seemed to block my ghosts.

I slammed into the force field and stumbled backward, although I managed to keep my feet. An experimental punch told me that I wasn't going to be able to break my way through. Shifting to Shadow Stalkers form didn't work either.

As I did, his force field flickered and he gestured at me, sending a bolt of lighting flashing in my directions. Cricket's power saved me; I was able to dodge bullets and even though lighting was far faster I was able to anticipate his attack. I slid out of the way just in time, returning to solid form and lunging forward, hoping to get inside before the force field reestablished itself.

I failed.

Switching into a gaseous form, I floated toward him. It was possible that the force-field wasn't airtight; if I could get inside then I could get inside his lungs. Even though with his regeneration it wouldn't kill him, hopefully it would incapacitate him long enough for me to get his powers.

Glancing at me floating toward him, Gabriel smirked.

"It's been a pleasure doing business with you all," Gabriel said. "And I'm sure I'll be seeing you again very soon. I think I'd like to be known by my Cape name from now on."

He glanced at me reprovingly. Apparently he'd thought I'd keep his existence as a secret between the two of us. Why he thought I'd be that stupid I wasn't sure.

"Call me Sylar," he said.

With that he reached behind him and he touched the wall. It disintegrated suddenly and he was suddenly gone.

I screamed and reached the hole in the wall. I could see him outside flying toward the city. He was flying faster than anyone I'd seen outside of the Triumvirate. It was a lot faster than I could manage. I punched the wall and part of it cracked and fell thirty feet to the floor of the platform below.

We were three stories up, and even if I'd been wearing the flying harness it wouldn't have mattered. I really needed to steal Purity's power.

He was already outside of Stormtiger's range.

"We have wounded," Armsmaster said shortly. "Help now or leave it be."

Without Panacea they'd be limited to natural healing. This close to a Slaughterhouse Nine attack that would be disastrous. Fortunately I had the power to help.

I cursed under my breath as I turned. I'd showed powers to the Protectorate without even thinking about it. They'd only had a suspicion about who I was before, now they knew.

On my own I could have used my heat to melt the ice. That much heat would have likely burned the building down around us, but a building would be worth the life of a serial killer.

I scowled and skated back to Miss Militia. An application of Othalla's regeneration on her and on the others didn't take long.

There was nothing I could do for the guy who had been turned into a gold statue. As far as I could tell, it was real gold. It was even incredibly heavy, and I found myself wondering where the extra mass had come from.

"He's gone," I said after touching him.

Everyone seemed angry, although fortunately none of it was directed at me.

"How long have you known he was replacing your boss?" I asked after we retreated to a different room that wasn't covered in ice and containment foam and that didn't have a breeze coming through the ten foot hole in the wall.

"A week," Armsmaster said. "We started Master Stranger protocols and he passed almost all of them. He missed only a few questions and it was enough for us to investigate. We found her body on the bottom of the Bay two days ago."

"If you'd told me what was going on, I could have done a better job," I said, scowling.

"We hoped not to tip her off," Armsmaster said, "And you aren't known for being particularly good at lying."

"Apparently you weren't as good as keeping it from him as you'd hoped either," I said.

"We've got more information on the abilities he possesses," Armsmaster said. "And we've cut him off from damaging information and PRT resources. This isn't entirely a loss."

"It cost Edward Jameson his life," Miss Militia said. She was pale, probably from the aftermath of being shot twice in the stomach.

"It could have cost all of you yours," I said. "If he wasn't saving you for a snack later."

"We took that into account," Armsmaster said. "Whatever process he uses to take powers has to take time and it didn't seem likely that he'd have time to do it to any of us in the middle of combat."

"Unlike me," I said. "Try something like this with me and I doubt you'll like the outcome."

I'd been avoiding taking powers from heroes, but self defense was something I believed in quite strongly. If they came after me, I'd make them regret it.

"We need you,"Armsmaster said. "You've left us undefended against Leviathan, dependent on whoever we can draw on from out of the city."

"You're welcome for my getting rid of the criminal element in the city," I said sharply. "Do you want to start blaming anyone else for all of this, or are you going to blame me for this too?"

I was angry at what had happened. I was convinced that with better preparation I could have done better against him.

Still, I'd learned that I could actually fight him. I had a lot more power than I'd had the last time I'd met him, and I had options I hadn't had then. I undoubtedly would have more options available in the future, especially if I was the one who had the element of surprise.

"We need to go over the abilities we know he has," Armsmaster said. "While it is still fresh in our mind."

We'd reached another conference room, this one half the size of the other, but the PRT agents weren't following us.

"Telekinisis," I said. "Shape changing. Enhanced hearing by his own admission. Cryokinisis, precognition, regeneration, disintegration, flight...the powers of New Wave and Parian."

"Gold transmutation," Vista said.

I winced. I'd almost forgotten.

"I met him once before," I said. "And he told me that he had almost twenty powers before he'd even came to Brockton Bay."

"Which means he might have eight powers that are unaccounted for," Armsmaster said grimly. "Assuming he wasn't lying as a way of intimidating you."

"I don't want to believe that he has half again as many powers as I do," I said. "But I believe him."

Of course, even with my enhanced body language skills I hadn't caught on to the fact that he wasn't Piggot. Given the way I was the first time, he could have told me anything and I'd have believed it.

"He knew things," Miss Militia said. "Things he shouldn't have known."

"Some sort of thinker ability then," Assault said. For once he didn't seem like he was in a good humor at all."Perhaps he reads memories when he takes the brains?"

"He didn't take Emily Piggot's brain," Armsmaster said. "It's possible that he has some kind of ability to read memories from objects...that's a power that we've seen before. If he does, he could have pieced together a picture of her personality from things she had in her home and office."

"It would explain why he was almost able to pass the Master Stranger protocol," Miss Militia said. "But it also means that he will be incredibly difficult to uncover."

"He has the ability to draw precognitively," I said. "He was the one who alerted me to Leviathan attacking in the first place. It's possible that he knew about this attack long before it happened."

I could almost see it in my mind. With a series of pictures he could have guessed at the most likely plan of attack and done what he could to counter that attack. It was essentially what we were hoping to do with the Slaughterhouse Nine, only on a different scale.

"Is it bad that I'm kind of wishing we were back to the days when all we had to worry about were Kaiser and Skidmark?" Clockblocker asked.

He'd been one of those shot, and he looked spooked. Presumably he'd never been confronted by his own mortality, and I wondered if he would last with the Wards.

Of course, leaving wouldn't make much of a difference.

"He has the addresses of every Protectorate member and every Ward," I said. "I doubt anyone's families are in danger; I don't think he really cares about normal people at all unless they get in his way. The thing is, I'd be kind of uncomfortable going home tonight if I were any of you."

"And you aren't?" Clockblocker asked. He sounded angry and scared.

"He's not the only monster I have after me," I said. I thought about it for a moment. "Actually, you probably have to worry about Sophia going after your families. She's already gone after mine, and while I'm probably at the top of her list, I've heard she didn't particularly like any of you."

"Besides," I said. "I've taken steps to protect my family, and I have ways of escaping if he comes after me, assuming I don't get him first."

One touch would be all it took, even if I ended up becoming a worse monster than he was. I could only hope that I had the mental strength and fortitude to avoid what he was calling the Hunger.

"Until the Slaughterhouse Nine is defeated, all of our families are in danger," Miss Militia said. "I would suggest that families start taking vacations out of town, but that might make it obvious who the Wards are."

"Not if they keep going to school," I said. "And don't let their friends visit their houses for a few days."

Sending Dad on vacation sounded like an excellent idea now that I thought about it. With the money from Tattletale I could send him anywhere; I wondered how Hawaii was at this time of year. The farther away I could send him the better it would be.

Of course, at the rate we were going Dad wouldn't have a job soon because of all his absences. However, that might be the case anyway depending on how much damage the Nine and Leviathan did to the city. The economy was struggling already; there would probably be layoffs by the thousands if entire businesses were destroyed.

The mysterious disappearance of the leader of Medhall was already causing problems for the economy.

"Is it right for us to make sure our families are in danger without warning everyone else?" Vista asked. "People will be defenseless."

"Letting them know we know they are coming will lose us an important tactical advantage," Armsmaster said. "Every member of the Slaughterhouse that we kill...or depower will save thousands of lives in the future. This is our one, best chance of finally ending them for good."

Once again they were talking about discarding human lives for the sake of expediency and tactics. The thing that disgusted me was that they weren't entirely wrong. The upcoming fight was going to be hard enough without the Slaughterhouse knowing we were coming.

"I'll be in charge until Piggot's replacement is chosen," Armsmaster said. "Which likely won't happen until this thing with the Slaughterhouse Nine is resolved. The upper echelons aren't likely to send a green director into a war zone."

"We still have to talk about strategies in dealing with the upcoming threats," Miss Militia said. Her color had returned to normal and she'd seemingly regained her equilibrium. "The Slaughterhouse Nine, this Sylar, Sophia Hess and Leviathan."

"These are our priorities," Armsmaster said. "We'll need to suspend actions against what's left of the Empire until the Slaughterhouse situation is resolved."

"All right," I said. "Let's talk tactics."

The illusion that I wasn't Vengeance was gone, and I had no doubt that while they were being accommodating now while I was of use to them things might change in the future. Even if they genuinely wanted to be my allies they had to answer to their superiors. The new Director of Brockton Bay might have different priorities.

Still, there was a saying I'd seen on a television show once; I forget which one. It was this; keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

Gab... Sylar had done that, and I was going to need to follow suit.

The gloves were going to have to come off if I was going to win the upcoming battles. Sylar had more experience than I did, and so did the Slaughterhouse and Leviathan. That meant that I was going to have to be more clever than they were and I was going to have to work harder.

Most of all, I was going to need allies, even if only temporarily, and this meeting was the first step toward that.


	48. Airport

As Dad stood in line in security, I made my way to the airport bathroom. As soon as I slipped into a stall I vanished into the mirror universe, and I slipped out into the empty copy of the airport. I was getting used to the creepiness of it, even if I sometimes worried that Sophia might be waiting for me behind any corner.

Fortunately the Brockton Bay airport had a lot of mirrored windows, so I could sit and watch Dad as he waited impatiently for the airplane to arrive. He deserved this, even though I would have preferred to have gone with him. He and Mom had always talked about going to Hawaii; it would be bittersweet for him now to go alone. It was the farthest place I could send him without his having to get a passport, which would take time we didn't have.

The families of at least four of the Wards had taken the opportunity to take vacations as well. I still didn't know their civilian identities, although I could make guesses from seeing teenagers wishing their parents off in the middle of the school day. It was sloppy protection for their identities, but I couldn't blame them. I was here with Dad, after all.

I watched until Dad boarded the plane and it took off, watching from the mirrored reflections of the glass windows outside. I wouldn't be satisfied until he called me from Oahu safe.

Slipping back into the restroom, I checked for legs under the stalls in the mirror before slipping into one that was unoccupied. I appeared a moment before the stall door opened and a woman stared at me, mouth open.

"I'm done," I muttered as I pushed past her. I didn't bother to wash my hands, which garnered me some dirty looks from the other women.

There were cameras everywhere and I needed to be seen leaving the airport lest I set off some kind of an alarm. That was the last thing I needed.

I felt a tug on my shirt as I was walking through the lobby. A little blonde girl with her hair done up in ringlets was staring up at me.

"Will you be my mommy?" she asked.

She was too old to be asking that kind of question, so I shook my head irritably. "We can ask security to help find your mother. Are you lost?"

"Are _you_?" she asked. "Working with a PRT who betrayed you, who made your life hell. Don't you want revenge on the people who set their pet monster on you? Who tried to murder you. Who _killed your mother_?"

"What?"

It took me a moment to get it, and then I was lunging forward. They were a day early; had they had some kind of warning or had the pictures not been specific enough for Tattletale to make an accurate prediction?

"If you take my powers a virus will be released that kills everyone in this airport. Even with my skills you won't be able to save everyone in time."

I froze, my hands inches from her face.

"Besides, I'll scream that you're trying to kidnap me and all these nice people will try to rescue me. It'll be a fun bloodbath."

"You think they could stop me?" I asked.

"You still think you're a hero," she said. "Naive, poor little Taylor. Still attached to conventional morality."

"I thought you guys liked to torture your recruits," I said, staring at her and wondering where the other members of the Nine were. Was the Siberian waiting just out of sight?

"Some of us still like it, but I think it can get a little boring," she said. "Not that torture doesn't have its place, but think of what we could do together...stealing the very thing that makes parahumans think they are special. They already suffered the worst things they can imagine, and then you take the one thing that compensated for that...it's delicious."

"I could still take you," I said. "The PRT would tell me it is worth the death of a few thousand people compared to what you'll do in the future."

"And what about your father?" she asked. "Do you think I didn't put something on the plane he's on?"

"Do anything to my father and I won't just take your powers," I said coldly. "I'll have your knowledge and the ability to keep all of you alive no matter what I do to you."

"You don't even want to know what I meant about the PRT killing your mother?" she asked.

I shook my head. "Jack likes to mentally manipulate people. He's doing it through you, which means that he's a little afraid of me."

"Don't be overconfident," she said. "I just wanted to collect some souvenirs from the gift shop before Brockton Bay goes extinct."

"You really should give your powers to me," I said. "I doubt you'd like what would happen if you meet my counterpart."

Sylar was as bad as they were if not even worse. He didn't strike me as the kind of person who would enjoy working under the direction of someone else, and I doubted that Jack slash would defer to a newbie.

"We have our plans for him...and her," she said.

"Going after Shadow Stalker?" I asked. I'd known they were, of course from the picture I'd drawn. "She's nothing but a thug."

She didn't look surprised at what I was saying. Presumably whoever they'd gotten their information from had told them about my grudge against Shadow Stalker.

"It takes all kinds," she said primly. "Who am I to judge who Jack wants?"

"What do you want from me?" I asked. "You know I'm planning to drain you all as dry as a grape. How do you think dear Jack will do in prison without his powers?"

"He's quite resourceful,' she said. "Besides, he'll never see prison."

It was true. They all had kill orders. A security guard could walk up to Bonesaw this very moment and put a bullet in the back of her head and he'd get nothing but a massive monetary reward even though she was technically a child.

I heard the sounds of screaming from the other end of the concourse and my head snapped in that direction. By the time I looked back at Bonesaw she was gone. What was worse, I couldn't even hear her through the screams and the sounds of running feet.

Stepping into the bathroom I pulled my costume out of the dimensional space. A flick of my fingers and it levitated before me and I shadowed out of my clothes. I stepped into my costume and a moment later I was solidly inside it.

It was something I should have been practicing a long time ago, but I'd had so much on my plate that I hadn't ever thought of it. A flick of my fingers and my clothes were banished to that other dimension.

Learning to do this after the Protectorate knew who I was was frustrating, but I hoped to still live in this town with Dad after this was all over. Having norms know who I was was a recipe for disaster; all it took was one gangbanger with a grudge and Dad was toast.

I allowed the world to slow around me and I raced down the wide aisles. People were dropping like flies all over the concourse, their skin bubbling as they were exposed to something nasty and virulent.

As I raced forward I used Stormtiger's powers to create a barrier of air around me. I had no guarantee that I was immune to whatever this was, and the disease was progressing faster than my biokinisis would be able to handle.

The barrier wouldn't be enough to deflect attacks but hopefully it would insulate me from whatever disease that was killing people left and right.

Othalla's power didn't necessarily require skin to skin contact, so I formed a skintight metal glove around my hand, as thin as possible. I reached out to a woman lying on the ground in her thirties and I applied regeneration.

She screamed and gurgled and her entire body seemed to fall in on itself as the regeneration only sped up what was happening to her.

I dropped the gauntlet and turned, staring at the people around me. Some of them were dissolving into skeletons already, while others were dying more slowly. They were all in terrible pain. I saw families, mothers and children. Mothers were clutching their children despite the fact that their flesh was pooling together and melding into one horrendous mass.

Despite that some almost looked OK. They still looked as though they could be saved.

If I'd had Panacea's power I'd have been able to do something about this, but...

A little girl was staring at me, mouthing words I couldn't understand. People saw someone in a costume and they thought that help was coming. When I'd been a child I'd believed that if Alexandria showed up everything would be all right.

I saw that same trust in the little girl's eyes. She probably didn't even know who I was supposed to be. All she saw was someone in a suit, not just a fifteen year old who barely knew what she was doing.

Scowling, I looked at my bare hand. I'd sworn to be a hero, to be better than the Protectorate who let the ends be more important than the means. I'd complained, at least in my mind about how they allowed people to die because it fit their tactical goals.

These people deserved a chance to live as much as my father did, as much as anyone I knew.

I needed to be better or I was on the path to becoming Sylar.

I pulled my cell phone out of it's dimensional pocket. I pushed a single number, and Armsmaster's voice came on the line.

"It's started," I said. "At the airport. Bring Haz Mat suits. There are at least a hundred people dying from something Bonesaw cooked up. I'm going to see if there is something I can do."

"Do you have a power than can help?" he asked. "Othalla..."

"Makes it worse. I'm going to have to examine it up and close and personal."

"Wait... what?"

I switched the phone off and dropped it into my pocket dimension. Taking a deep breath I dropped the air shield.

Touching someone would have been too dangerous; all I wanted was a small exposure. The moment I took a deep breath I snapped the shield back in place, pushing the disease away.

I could feel the virus moving through my body, replicating at a speed unknown by anything in nature. So focused was I on what was happening inside my body that I barely noticed as the world tilted and I fell to my side.

People were dying; if I could survive this there was a chance I'd be able to help at least some of them. It was obvious that while the disease was progressing very rapidly in some people others were doing much better, although it was likely that none of them were going to survive in the long run.

I had the benefit of enhanced speed from multiple capes. That meant that I thought faster and it meant that I could do things with my biokinesis that I hadn't been able to do before.

The world shrank around me and everything went black as I focused on the task of containment and elimination. Figuring out how to destroy the virus was only the first step. The next step was to formulate something in my blood that would be able to help other people. It was a monumental task, one I wasn't certain I'd be able to do.

It was the only thing I had to save people, though, and my entire world shifted to my inner senses.

Like a battlefield the fight was more difficult than anything I'd experienced. The virus took a scorched earth strategy, burning everything around as it made it's way forward.

I considered raising my body temperature high enough that the virus wouldn't be able to survive. If necessary I could send my flames coursing through my blood, literally boiling it. I'd survive, but it would wipe out any virus or bacteria, possibly including some good ones that helped the body function.

That would defeat the entire purpose of this, though. I'd done this to save people, and that would only work if I did it the hard way. I'd save the flames as a last ditch effort if everything else was lost.

I'd gotten darker since I'd gotten my powers. Using them had made me feel a little dirty; it seemed every power I had involved stealing something that was precious. No matter what excuses I made, what justifications, that was wrong. Stealing powers, stealing skills... I was stealing people's lives and even villains were people.

The Nine, though... I'd have no guilt for what I did to them. They were less than human and they deserved nothing but to face the same kind of pain they delivered to other people with such glee.

Losing track of time it seemed like forever before I was victorious. It took even longer to turn my blood into something that would seek out and kill the virus. My only worry was that it would all be for nothing, that everyone would be dead before I finished my task.

After an eternity I woke. I was naked under a hospital gown and I smelled an intense smell of disinfectants.

Armsmaster was sitting in a chair across from me.

"My blood," I gasped out. My throat felt dry and my lips felt chapped.

"We know," he said. "Our thinker was able to figure out your plan. You've been pumping out a cure almost as fast as we've been able to pump blood into you."

"Did it help?" I asked, closing my eyes. I was suddenly very aware of the IVs in my arms. I must have subconsciously allowed them to be inserted, otherwise they never would have been able to get through my force field.

"Fifty people," he said. "You saved fifty people."

"How many died?" I asked. I wondered if the little girl was among the people I'd saved or if she'd died still waiting for a hero to save her.

"Five hundred," he said, grimacing. "Most of those before we were able to get there. There was nothing you could have done."

I closed my eyes. Fifty people out of five hundred and fifty... I'd saved less than one out of ten.

"Sometimes you can't save everyone," Armsmaster said. "I've had to learn that the hard way. I've been in every Endbringer fight since I started and I've seen more death than I can count."

"How do you deal with it, then?" I asked.

"Being a hero isn't about saving everyone," he said. "It's about not giving up on trying. As long as people know there is someone out there doing their best they don't lose hope."

His hands tightened into fists and he looked down before looking back up at me.

"What you did was incredibly stupid... and incredibly brave. There were those of us who had questioned your commitment to even being a hero. This answers the questions we had."

"I don't feel like a hero," I said.

"Real heroes don't," he said. "Being a hero isn't about getting the promotion or the fame or the action figures... although those are perks that some of us spend a little too much time reaching for."

He grimaced and I wondered who he was talking about.

"How long has it been?" I asked.

"A day," he said. "There have been no other sightings of the Nine, even though we have all the areas they are supposed to appear in under surveillance. Of course, if they detect our surveillance then they won't go to those places."

The problem with my kind of precognition was that the future was always shifting and changing.

"Is my Dad OK?" I asked. Bonesaw had threatened to unleash something on the plane he was on after all.

"He's in quarantine," Armsmaster said. "Everyone who was on a flight leaving from that airport on that day has been placed under quarantine just in case Bonesaw decided to get... creative."

A biotinker hitting a major airport was a disaster the world couldn't afford. I understood the anxiety everyone felt about it.

"And how is he?"

"So far there is no indication that anyone is sick. We've had our best biotinkers working on the case to rule out anything before the people on the flights disperse out into the public."

I felt a sense of relief at that. His vacation wasn't going to be what it could have been, but I doubted that he could have really enjoyed himself knowing that I was back here facing,,, this.

"How did they know?" I asked suddenly. "About Brockton Bay in the first place, but more importantly about the fact that I would be at that airport with my father?"

"Three PRT agents didn't show up for work this morning. We were in the process of investigating when you called in. They and their families were all tortured to death, and their access codes were used to access PRT databases."

"I'm starting to wonder why I tell you guys anything," I said sourly.

"The problem with working with groups is that things like this happen. If multiple people hold a secret, then all you have to do us attack the weakest link and you'll have it."

"So where do we go from here?" I asked.

"We continue with the plan," he said. "Such as it is. We expect that you, Sylar and Shadow Stalker will all be contacted over the next few days as part of a recruitment drive. It's possible that they might also target me and possibly Vista. There may be others. There will be attacks used as distractions and they will try to create chaos and terror."

"We're going to stop them," I said, but my voice wasn't full of confidence.

I'd saved fifty lives today, but I couldn't help but think of the five hundred I hadn't. If I hadn't been at that airport would they have attacked there? Was I partially responsible for all of those deaths?

I was going to have to be better than this if I was going to beat them.


	49. Sentence

"How much are they likely to know about our precognitive pictures?" I asked. "If they know about those we've pretty much lost our entire advantage."

Armsmaster said "We limited that knowledge to the Protectorate and the Wards and the twelve PRT agents who were in the meeting. Dragon suggested that it might be useful to compartmentalize that information and do we kept it offline."

"I'm glad someone over there has some sense," I said. "Did Glory Girl and Panacea ever reach Dragon?"

He nodded. "We aren't making that public knowledge either. It's considered need to know for obvious reasons."

"Pancea could out Bonesaw Bonesaw," I said. "Probably without even having to work at it much. Having her in the same city as those... well, it might not be the brightest idea."

"There's some indication that Jack Slash brainwashes the members of the Nine," Armsmaster said. "Not that this excuses anything they do, of course."

"Have I been cleared to get out of bed?" I asked.

"I'd think you'd know better than we would. We didn't have biokinesis on the list of your known powers, but our Thinker was able to intuit that you had it."

I shrugged. "I think all Capes like to keep the full extent of their powers a secret. I just happen to have a little more to hide than most."

"The amount of power you have now is terrifying," Armsmaster said. "The idea that there are two of you in the same city with similar powers beggars all comprehension. Are you sure that Sylar isn't related to you?"

I shook my head. "I'm not even sure that he's from this universe. He made a few comments the first time that I met him that makes me think he's from somewhere else. I don't think he's the only one."

"He's one of those with the strange brain growths," Armsmaster said. He scowled. "You know that you don't have an active gemma yourself? You have the same kind of growth we've seen on several dead Capes."

Apparently they'd taken advantage of the fact that I was unconscious to study my body while I was in no condition to argue. They'd probably say that it was medically necessary to keep me alive, even though it really served their agenda.

"I don't have an explanation for that," I said. "Panacea told me. I have no idea what it means; I'm certainly not from another universe."

"We know," Armsmaster said. "Your theory about the others being from someplace else seems to be borne out with some of them but not with others. Some of them are clearly homegrown while others are ghosts with no history and no data trail at all."

I pulled an IV out of my arm. Lung's regeneration was noticeably slower that Sylar's, but the blood stopped flowing almost immediately anyway.

"I'm assuming I've been disinfected."

"Your costume had to be destroyed," he said. "It was too badly contaminated to be cleaned."

"Does that mean that the airport can't be used any more?"

"Hard surfaces are easier to disinfect," he said. "The more pressing matter is whether people will trust the airport enough to use it any more. The economic impact of this is going to be profound."

"It'll be worse when they decide to use Shatterbird," I said.

"People are already panicking and leaving the city. There are traffic jams, people getting into fights; the police forces are overloaded."

The attack on the airport hadn't just been a distraction then; it had probably been created to create exactly this result.

"They'll be using it as a distraction," I said. "Keeping us too busy to know what they are doing or why until it's too late."

"I know," Armsmaster said. "We've had experience in dealing with them before, and it's always a nightmare. There's a reason that they haven't been defeated in thirty years."

It was frustrating. A lack of knowledge had always been my greatest weakness. I wished I'd found someone who had a useful Thinker power, maybe something like the ability to see through the eyes of animals. The ability to see through traffic cameras would have been good too, except that most of the cameras in Brockton Bay had been vandalized or destroyed.

"We need more information," I said.

"We've got our Thinker hidden away in a classified location," Armsmaster said. "Far from any windows."

"She was wrong about the time," I said. "They showed up a day early."

"It's not an exact science," he said. "Thinker powers are only as good as the information they receive."

"Let's get a little more," I said. "Can you get me some paper and charcoal pens?"

"So you did take the power of the precognitive," he said.

I winced. Another polite fiction gone. I was going to have to keep better track of the lies I was telling or I wasn't going to have any secrets left.

"He begged me to take his power," I said. "He couldn't handle the visions he was getting."

"Not everyone is suited for this kind of life," he admitted. He hesitated. "How are you doing?"

He sounded awkward to my newfound social skills, almost as though he wasn't skilled at making small talk. How he'd been able to advance in an ultimately political organization without being an adroit politician I wasn't sure, unless he was just that good at what he did that he'd been promoted in spite of himself.

"The last couple of years of my life have been a living hell in which I was helpless to do anything," I said. "At least now I have the power to fight back. I'm surprisingly OK."

I wasn't even boosting endorphin levels or doing several other things that I'd read about that could affect my brain. Altering my own mind seemed like a risky proposition.

He nodded and seemed almost relieved to move on.

"Our Thinker suggested that you might want a sketchpad," he said.

Tattletale was annoying at the best of times, but there were times that she was useful. This was one of them. As he handed me the tools, Armsmaster said, "Do you mind if I stay and watch?"

"You don't have tinkering to do?" I asked.

"I've built everything I can think of to prepare for this," he said. "And Dragon says that making a thirtieth tweak on my Halberd to get a ten thousandth percent improvement isn't a good use of my time."

"And sitting by my bedside is?" I asked.

"You are possibly the strongest Cape this side of the Triumvirate... and you may surpass them sooner or later. Cultivating you as an ally is a good use of our time, or so Dragon says."

I was surprised that he was so bluntly honest. I'd have expected some kind of prevarication, not a bold admission that I was useful to them. Strangely, it made me like him more.

"She's been telling me that I have to pay more attention to the human element," he said. He hesitated. "Also, my labs are currently being renovated after an accident when I let Kid Win use some of my equipment."

"You know I took Bakuda, right?" I asked. "There might be some things I can make that can help."

"Time is always the Tinker's greatest enemy," he said. "Given enough time a Tinker can replicate almost any power, at least within his specialty. Unfortunately we aren't likely to get that kind of time."

I hesitated. "I suppose it would be all right to watch."

Holding out my hands, I took the sketch pad he offered. He handed me a set of colored charcoal pens.

I allowed my mind to go blank and moments later the world faded around me. It had always concerned me, how vulnerable I was when I was using this particular power but there really wasn't anything I could do other than not use the power. The problem was that while I could initiate the power at will, if I went too long without using it I'd find myself falling into the trance without realizing it. It was a demanding power, one that I almost wished I hadn't taken.

When someone tries to give their power away there had to be drawbacks.

Visions of the future flashed through my head. I could only suppose that my mind slowed, because it always seemed to take only a few seconds to have the vision, but when I woke minutes or even hours would have passed.

As I came out of the trance I realized that Armsmaster was gone. I could hear the sounds of alarms everywhere and I could smell smoke. The window beside me was completely gone and even though I had no wounds there was blood on me.

In other parts of the complex I could hear screams and moans of pain.

It had to be Shatterbird. Even though the PRT had been working feverishly to remove as much glass as possible from their complexes since the warning about the Nine had come out, there was always the little bits that surprised you; things that you didn't think counted as glass or that you were never even aware that were glass.

With only a few days to work with they'd been replacing windows with large reinforced plastic sheets, but computer monitors were harder to change.

Fear was evident everywhere, even though the Rig was separate from the city by enough that I shouldn't have felt much fear.

Staring down at the papers in my hands, I realized that I knew where and when they were going to be next. I had a few hours, so I needed to do what I could to help people. Healing people with Othalla's power would garner me some goodwill with the PRT agents, which hopefully would make them hesitate to kill me if the next director thought they should.

I carefully dropped the pages in the pocket dimension as I got up and headed for the sounds of the nearest moaning. It sounded like I had some work to do.

The advantage of surprise was overwhelming in cases where forces were otherwise well matched. I'd seen it on both sides myself; when I'd been surprised people had gotten away with things they never would have if I was prepared.

When I'd had the benefit of surprise I'd been able to defeat an entire city's worth of villains all by myself.

For once I was planning on taking advantage of surprise and planning. I had knowledge of where some members of the Nine were going to be and I was going to make them pay for what they did.

I considered contacting the Protectorate, but they were still busy trying to keep order in a city that had devolved into chaos. From what I heard there was active looting happening everywhere, with some storekeepers having to defend their stores with guns and rifles. The PRT had been injured, but not as badly as everyone else, and so they were stepping in to help local law enforcement deal with the chaos.

Healing the PRT agents had taken longer than I'd planned, and I'd promised to go to the hospitals to help the wounded. For the moment I was making a detour.

Riding my motorcycle through the mirror universe, I made my way to an abandoned warehouse. I'd been here before; it was the sight of my first major battle with the Empire. My guess was that Jack had chosen it because it was in the PRT databases and because he had a sense of irony.

That sense of irony was hopefully going to get him and the others killed.

I knew the location already, but I took care to explore it in the mirror universe to see if there was any changes. They'd apparently set up beds and cots and there was a large television and computer in the corner.

There weren't any mirrored surfaces to be found. That was probably due in part to the fact that Shatterbird had destroyed all the glass surfaces in town. I had to wonder if that was partially a tactic to cripple me; after all Armsmaster had known about my mirror universe ability, and it had presumably went into the PRT database concerning me and my abilities.

Without mirrored surfaces I was going in blind. That could end disastrously. I felt a moment of trepidation, but the temptation of the powers I'd gain was more than enough to calm my worries. Once I gained the Siberian's power I'd be more than a match for Alexandria, and at that point Sylar's telekinisis wouldn't be anything more than an annoyance.

I could end this all in a single attempt, much like I had when the criminals had met to decide how to deal with me. Once I had the powers of the Slaughterhouse Nine I'd be unbeatable by anything less than an Endbringer. After all, the Siberian alone had been able to defeat Alexandria; with the powers of eight others I'd be able to outclass any of the Triumvirate with the possible exception of Eidolon.

Still, they had to pay. I was in my Vengeance costume, not because I thought it would intimidate them, but because I felt more confident in this form.

Forcing myself to levitate to the ceiling, I blinked across to the real world. Hopefully they wouldn't notice me until I dropped down in the middle of them and started stealing powers right and left.

I screamed in pain as I was hit by a tremendous force, slammed toward the ground. Looking up I could see that the Siberian was waiting on the rafters. I hit the ground and a moment later I found my power leaving me.

My form didn't change, but it left me wearing metal armor that was suddenly too heavy. Hatchetface was standing over me in all his glory, looking like a reject from a horror movie. He held a cleaver.

"You're too predictable," Jack Slash said, staring down at me. He clicked his tongue. "And I thought you'd had so much promise."

They'd had the PRT records of all the interviews done by villains who I'd attacked in the past; they'd probably figured out my tactics well in advance.

Grabbing a small bomb from my pocket, I tried to throw it at Hatchetface, only to have a mechanical spider pluck it out of my hand. With my powers gone I couldn't access my dimensional pocket.

Spiders swarmed over me, plucking bombs from me and keeping me from moving. I froze and they stared at me for a long moment before finally moving away.

"Bonesaw wanted to see how you tick," Jack said. "Someone with powers without a working gemma."

That was right...my power was from a different, mysterious source. I felt inside and realized that I could still feel fear from the buildings in the distance. I still had my precognitive abilities. It wouldn't be enough to save me, but it would increase my strength and speed beyond what they expected.

" _You have been judged,"_ I said. My throat was dry and I felt incredibly weak compared to what I normally felt. Still, I'd fought in the past while barely having any powers, and I'd managed to come out ahead.

"You aren't in any position to judge anyone," he said. He smirked. "You won't be judging anyone ever again. Bonesaw needs a research project; she gets antsy if she gets too bored."

I forced myself to stand, despite the weight of my armor. I wouldn't have been strong enough without the slight boost from the fear.

I could see them standing around me, the whole crew. Bonesaw was staring at me with unmistakable avarice. She undoubtedly wanted to see how I had powers without a working gemma.

Jack looked almost bored. Shatterbird looked much the same. Crawler was a horror who was staring at me with a different kind of avarice.

" _YOU HAVE BEEN JUDGED,"_ I said, rising slowly to my feet. More than any of the Empire Capes, more than Lung, these were people who had harmed their fellow man. They had caused more misery than almost anyone on the planet and they deserved anything I could give them.

"She's not the brightest Cape," Bonesaw said. "Maybe all her powers went to her head?"

" _YOU HAVE ABUSED YOUR POWERS AND THEY SHALL BE TAKEN FROM YOU."_ I said.

"I'll teach her a lesson," Crawler gurgled. There was something wrong with his voice, almost as much as the voice I had given myself.

"And ruin all our fun?" Jack said to him. He turned back to me. "Don't you want to know how the PRT killed your mother?"

I stared at him, my body shaking with the rage I was feeling. He had no right to try to manipulate me using my mother. The fact that he was speaking about her at all profaned her memory.

When I didn't speak for a long moment he sighed. "Maybe you'll be a little more agreeable when you've been disarmed."

He looked over at Hatchetface and said, "Cut off her arms. You don't have to keep her alive; Bonesaw can do wonders with a corpse these days. Just be sure to leave her head intact."

I stood my ground as Hatchetface grunted and lifted his cleaver. As he brought it down I reached up and grabbed his arm. It was like being hit by a sledgehammer. However, I felt the familiar pleasure of power flowing through me as I drained him, and suddenly he found that he couldn't move his arm.

" _YOU ARE GUILTY!"_ I said. _"AND THE SENTENCE IS DEATH!"_

My face and head were suddenly wreathed in fire. I turned my hand into a blinding mass of twisting metal blades and I plunged it directly into Harchetface's chest, resulting in an explosion of blood that sprayed across the room.


	50. Inferno

"Well shit," Jack said.

I twitched my toes and all the bombs that Bonesaw's spiders had removed from me went off at once, destroying the spiders and creating blinding flashes of light and sudden areas where there was no sound while other areas had overwhelming noise.

Creating areas of null time hadn't been an option if I had a chance of being caught in it. After all, I wouldn't be able to release myself if no time passed for me. My null time bombs had all been stored safely away where they couldn't be used against me.

Instead I'd focused on normal explosions and bombs designed to confuse and distract.

I threw Hatchetface's body toward Crawler. He eagerly grabbed for it, and the bomb I'd materialized inside the torso from my dimensional pocket exploded into an area of null time.

The area expanded once, twice, then once again. The parts of him that were outside the zone shuddered and then they went still. Even with his powers I suspected that those parts couldn't survive being separated from the main part of his body. If they could, I had no doubt that Crawler would have split himself into multiple beings like a mythical worm.

The world was moving slowly around me. Of all of them, only the Siberian seemed to be moving in something similar to real time. Shards of glass were flying toward me, but I dodged them easily. It was possible that they might not have done much damage, but I couldn't take the risk of anything weakening me prematurely.

The shards of glass reversed course, following me, but I was faster than any of them. As I got within range of Shatterbird the glass behind me dropped suddenly to the floor. At my speed they still were still falling as I sprang forward. My fist hit Shatterbird in the throat, punching through the rotating glass that she used for armor. That armor was already collapsing because of Hatchetface's power. I drained her even as she suddenly fell, unable to breathe and with a broken neck. There was some kind of reinforcement to her spine, but against the power of Hatchetface's strength enhanced by Lung's power and biokinetic strength it shredded like tissue paper.

The Siberian had almost reached me by now, so I mirrored to the other universe. I ran across the room and I reappeared next to Burnscar. Her fire exploded around her, but it was already guttering out when I disemboweled her, not that it would have mattered. Fire never bothered me anyway. There was some kind of mesh protecting her organs, but it was nothing more than a minor annoyance.

I felt cuts appearing on my back; apparently Jack was trying to hurt me. I smirked. The cuts were healing already, and as the fight went on they would only heal more quickly. Unless he caught me on an eye I doubted there was much he could do to me.

There was, however a lot I could do to him.

Suddenly my face was smashed into the wall. Hatchetface was much stronger than any Cape I had taken before, with the exception of a ramped up Lung. Yet compared to the Siberian I was as weak as a baby. For a moment I considered using Fenja or Menja's powers to grow, but I dismissed it out of hand. It would make me stronger and tougher, but it would slow me down, and the Siberian wasn't that much slower than I was.

I grabbed the Siberian's arm and tried to pull with my power. Instead of the expected rush all I felt was an emptiness, as though nothing was there.

What?

How was the Siberian immune to the power that had worked on every parahuman I'd ever set it against? It had even worked on Hatchetface. I didn't understand, and it made me feel a little afraid.

That fear was easy to shake off, however. If I couldn't drain her I could bypass her. I doubted that the Siberian could keep the Slaughterhouse Nine going on her own. She wasn't a leader or a catalyst like Jack Slash, and she couldn't build her own army of pet monsters like Bonesaw. Kill the rest of them and she was just a lone monster, one that the entire world would have time to figure out how to end.

The Siberian grabbed me around the throat, but I used Shadow Stalkers abilities to shadow right through her claws. If I couldn't affect her for some reason, then I'd just have to take all the others and then escape while I figured out what to do.

Mannequin was moving toward me, less quickly than Siberian but faster than humanly possible. Given that he was a cyborg with most of his powers being mechanical, I couldn't depend on Hatchetface's powers to stop him.

As I reformed he lashed out at me with limbs which were attached to his body by chains.

I let myself flare with heat. Now that I had Burnscar's power in addition to my own, I could go even hotter. I grabbed his arm and tried to pull him toward me, but the chain just continued to extend itself. I lashed out with Hookwolf's blades and sparks flew as the blades cut through his chain, leaving him minus an arm.

Barely dodging the Siberian's blow toward my back, I spun around with the chain, which was suddenly on fire. It didn't make a difference. It was almost as though the Siberian wasn't there.

As I did so, I grabbed the glass surrounding Shatterbird's body and I launched it toward Jack Slash and Bonesaw. Hopefully I'd be able to hamstring them both so they couldn't run. Everything I'd heard about Jack said that he was a slippery customer. However it would be hard to escape if you couldn't walk.

Jack Slash looked shocked, as though he hadn't thought I would attack him at all. He managed to dodge it, despite all that, but it didn't matter. There were fires around the room, and with Burnscar's. I discovered could teleport through fire.

Teleportation was the one power I'd been craving all this time. Other than Oni Lee's power, which was literal suicide I hadn't had this one ability. I still didn't have a reliable long distance ability to teleport, but there was a joy just in using this power.

There was a certain joy to be found in the flames, too. They were almost mesmerizing. I lashed out with flames at Mannequin, although the flames mostly seemed to splash off of him. It wasn't surprising; Sphere had planned to go to space and had specialized in protecting vulnerable people from hostile conditions.

I suspected, though, that if I kept it up long enough the heat would eventually cook him from the outside in. Neither he nor the Siberian seemed to intend to let this happen. He started dancing around trying to avoid my blasts, while the Siberian lunged for me again.

Fangs were appearing in my mouth, and I was getting stronger. It was exhilarating starting from a stronger place. It meant that when I escalated I'd be able to reach heights I'd never even considered. Continue the battle long enough and I might even be able to beat the Siberian at her own game.

That moment wasn't now, however. The Siberian lunged at me, slicing through my armor like it was paper and cutting through the skin of my torso, cutting me deeply. Anyone else would have been crippled by the pain, but I'd reduced my pain responses long ago, and I had enough endorphins running through me from the joy of battle that I might not have noticed until it was all over. I laughed and a moment later I teleported across the room where the wall was on fire.

The sight of the fire created a sudden savage joy in my chest. This was what I was meant to be doing, using my powers the way they were meant to be, using them to their full potential. I was the fire and the flame! Blazing brightly like a falling star. No one could take me, and no one over would.

Mirroring into the other universe, I appeared behind Mannequin. I touched him and pulled him across to the other universe. As long as the Siberian kept attacking me I couldn't crack Mannequin open like a nut.

Away from the flames my mind started to clear, but my intentions didn't change. I'd gotten into this to kill them, and that was what I intended to do.

Mannequin was better at this than I would have thought as he dodged my attacks. Hatchetface's powers presumably negated his abilities as a tinker, but his technological advancements weren't affected at all.

I lashed out at him with buzzsaw hands; he tried wrapping his one good arm with it's chain around it, but that was a mistake.

Even more of a mistake was not looking behind him, where four versions of me appeared. Crusader's ghosts were able to walk through armor as though it wasn't there. Those ghosts were able to touch flesh but not matter, which meant that all the armor in the world was useless against them. A moment was all it took for them to plunge their hands into his body, blending his organs into a puree.

He stiffened suddenly and fell backwards with a thunderous crash.

While I doubted that he had skin any more, I knew I needed to touch at least one of his organs before he died. I wanted his power and suddenly nothing else seemed to matter. The thought of wasting the powers of one of the heroes who'd had a chance to actually change the entire world was almost more than I could bear.

Or maybe I was just greedy.

Cutting through his shell was difficult, but I managed to crack it, plunging my hand into his interior. I actually touched his brain even as it was expiring, and the familiar rush I got from taking powers filled me with pleasure. There had been a time when touching a living brain would have filled me with disgust, but now it didn't even bother me.

After all, it had been less than two minutes since I'd stuck my hands inside a serial killer and pureed his internal organs. There had been a time when I would have agonized over deliberate murder, but somehow I felt nothing now.

Reappearing in the flaming inferno that was what was left of the warehouse, I wasn't surprised to find Jack and Bonesaw and the Siberian gone. While I hadn't yet figured out how the Siberian was able to counteract not only my power but Hatchetface's, I would.

I could hear them escaping in what sounded like a van, but the flickering flames around me seemed to make it unimportant. They were hypnotic, the flames, mesmerizing in a way that I hadn't ever experienced before. I felt frozen to the spot, entranced by their beauty. It was overwhelming.

All my worries seemed to wash away. My fears of failure, my fears for my father, for the city, for the world. I hadn't realized how much of a burden those feelings had been until I was free of them. Nothing really mattered, nothing except the flame.

If seeing things burn was enough to make me feel this good, I had to wonder if seeing more things burn would feel even better.

Maybe it was like Lung's powers, exponential. If the more that burned the better I would feel, then wouldn't it make sense to burn as much as I could?

The Docks were an eyesore anyway, a blight on the city. Fire meant renewal, a chance to build again. It meant a chance for new life, a chance to remove the dead wood.

There was a lot of dead wood in the city, now that I came to think about it. I'd had foolish worries in the past about killing thugs and gangsters, even though they were the ones who were making the city into a hellhole.

Maybe it was time to take hell to them, to make them burn in the same way they were making the lives of the people around them burn. Forests required fire to burn away dead wood and brush so that the remaining healthy trees could grow healthy and thrive. Maybe I was meant to be that kind of an agent for change.

Shadow Stalker had thought she was a hunter because she'd taken out a few thugs and gangbangers. I had the power to wipe out hundreds. I had already eliminated the parahuman criminals in the city; I could easily wipe out the ordinary human element as well.

People would be able to walk the streets by night freely without worrying about being attacked. I could kill the people who were hurting people. Vengeance had already appointed himself judge and jury... why not executioner?

I heard the sounds of Armsmaster's motorcycle approaching, along with the distinctive sounds of several PRT vehicles.

They'd try to stop me in my quest for justice. While I doubted that they could do much to me, Miss Militia might be able to slow me down. I doubted that I had anything to worry about from Clockblocker considering that Hatchetface's aura should remove his powers.

It occurred to me suddenly that I'd been foolish in my aversion of taking powers from "heroes." Just because they were sanctioned by the government didn't make them any less of a gang than the other gangs in town. They had no qualms about taking villains into their ranks, which was something the other gangs would have endorsed.

Besides...in the end wouldn't I use their powers better than they would? With Clockblocker's power I could get close to Leviathan and stop him in an instant. Clockblocker would be killed long before he even got a chance to use his power.

With Armsmaster's skills I would be one step closer to having a power like Leet's without the limitations. All I had to do was drain enough tinkers and eventually I'd be able to cover all the bases. I'd be able to build anything.

Miss Militia would give me the range that I had been missing before I'd taken powers from Shatterbird and Burnscar. There were rumors that she had the power to create a small nuclear missile.

There wasn't a single hero in the Protectorate whose powers I couldn't use better than they did, and the higher the flames rose, the better an idea it seemed.

I wasn't sure exactly when the decision flashed through my mind that I was going to take them, but I knew that surprising them was the key to avoiding any unnecessary surprises. I still couldn't survive a mini-nuke, even if Hatchetface was tougher than my biokinesis or Lung's base level had been.

Surprising them was the obvious choice. Miss Milita was the main threat, so I'd take her out first. Armsmaster had great fighting skills, so I'd cook him inside his armor and then take him as he was dying. The others didn't have the power to stop me.

They'd been helpless against Sylar, and I was better than him now. I was the fire and the flame.

Switching into the mirror universe, I was suddenly in darkness. The comforting flames were gone, and it was like a cold splash of water had doused my entire body.

What was I doing?

Was I planning to attack my own allies in an attempt to get a few powers, even though it meant that the entire world would be against me? Legend could kill me from over the horizon and I'd never even see it coming. Eidolon could create a power that countered mine and left me as helpless as I had been before.

Alexandria... I doubted I had anything to worry about from her actually.

I stared at my hands covered in blood and viscera. Even now without the flames I was more worried about getting caught than about whether it was right to attack allies.

As I sat still, feeling my fangs retract and my body and mind start to cool, though, I could feel my thoughts return to normal.

It had to be Burnscar's powers that were doing this to me. I'd vaguely heard that her powers had an affect on her, but I'd forgotten. Even if I hadn't, I'd have assumed that I'd be able to handle it. Combining Lung's rage with Burnscar's fireborne sociopathy was a monumentally bad idea.

Instead of following through, I'd allowed the most dangerous members of the Nine to escape. Bonesaw was a walking pandemic waiting to happen. The Siberian was invincible. Jack was possibly the most dangerous of all because of his ability to recruit and change others into the same kind of psychopaths he was.

Still, I'd killed Hatchetface, Burnscar, Shatterbird and Mannequin and I'd neutralized Crawler. The Slaughterhouse Nine had been down a member already when they'd come to Brockton Bay, which may have been why they were recruiting. Now they were down to three and they were on the run.

If it wasn't for the fact that I was becoming as dangerous as any of them, I'd have to consider this a win. If I destroyed the Nine but became them the world wouldn't be any better off. It would be worse off because I had the power to get exponentially more powerful, and without morality it could happen very quickly.

I pulled the paper out of my pocket dimension and stared at it. There was a picture of my plunging my hand into Hatchetface's torso, my hand a mass of metal and blades. Had I done it solely because of the premonition, making it a self fulfilling prophecy, or had that been the best tactic, and the prophecy had merely reported what was most likely to happen?

If that was true, then what I saw on the other papers filled me with dread.


	51. Monument

I still had my original flame powers; I'd just have to avoid using Burnscar's too much, unless I absolutely had to. Setting too many things on fire could trigger it too, apparently, but I knew I had to avoid doing too much of that anyway. I'd come into this to save Brockton Bay, not to let it burn.

There wasn't any convenient way of knowing where the three remaining members of the Nine were at this moment. I knew I'd see them again; I had the proof.

The one thing I knew I couldn't do was return to the scene of the crime. Losing my mind there would mean attacking the Protectorate and losing any of the alliances I had been creating forever. Even though I could steal the skills from people that didn't mean that I had their experience, and they had decades of experience in everything from fighting Endbringers to negotiating political deals with national governments.

Besides, for all my power I wasn't as strong as an Endbringer. If the entire world turned against me I had no doubt that they could find some combination of powers that could take me down. There was undoubtedly parahumans that I'd never heard of who had powers that would bypass any of the defenses that I had and would wipe me out.

I had to do something to remind myself of what I was doing all this for. I needed to make myself feel good about what I was doing while reminding the world that I wasn't just someone to fear.

Putting out the fire I'd set would be a good start, but it was out of the question for now. The fire had been too invigorating, too mesmerizing.

Instead I jumped on my motorcycle, still left in this version of reality and I sped off as fast as I could for the edge of the realm.

Reaching the end of the line I let the reality collapse around me as I appeared in the real world. Leaving the warehouse district behind was a relief. I could see light on the horizon and hear fire trucks but it was far enough away that I could ignore its seductive call.

The rest of the city was a nightmare. There were cars wrecked in the street, both from the initial explosion of glass that had left hundreds blinded and crippled and from the previous panic as people had tried to leave the city after the plague at the airport. No city worker or wreckers had bothered to come and clean up the devastation.

As I drove through the city glass began to rise from the streets all around me, growing into a ball. At first it was the size of a baseball, but soon it was the size of a bowling ball then a basketball. I compressed the glass shards as tightly as I could, but there was a limit. Soon it was the size of a medicine ball.

As fast as I was driving the ball had no trouble following me. Shatterbird had been able to control all the glass in a city, which meant that I should be able to do the same. By the time the ball behind me had grown to a cubic meter it weighed more than two and a half tones.

It only grew larger the farther I went. I'd promised to help out at the hospital, but no one had said I couldn't clean up the city as I went. I left glass in places I couldn't see alone; the chances of me sending shards of glass flying through someone's jugular was too great if I didn't know they were there.

By the time I reached the hospital, the sphere was six feet in diameter, weighing more than sixteen tons. I wasn't sure what to do with it, so I dropped it in front of the hospital. I'd figure out what I wanted to do with it when I was finished.

Dropping into the mirror universe I quickly switched over into my other identity. I had bought several copies of my costume when I'd gotten Tattletale's infusion of cash knowing my history of destroying costume after costume.

It was time to go into Panacea mode.

Stepping into the hospital it was a scene of horror. There were moaning people littering the floors, leaving barely enough room to step around them. Many people had bandages around their eyes and their necks and I could see gurneys covered with sheets. Obviously not everyone was as lucky as the wounded.

"I'm here to help," I said to the lady in admitting. "I can heal."

Immediately people began to swarm me, reaching out and begging me loudly to help them first because their pain was obviously greater than that of anyone else.

I grimaced and felt my temper rise. These people were weak, unworthy to be protected. They weren't survivors.

Shaking my head I forced the thought away. That was the kind of thing Sophia would have thought. I'd thought I'd banished her thinking to the dark recesses of my mind, but Burnscar's trauma must have brought some of it back.

At the rate I was going I wasn't sure how much of my mind was going to be my own by the time this was all over. Would I have a hundred different forces pulling me in all different directions, and if I did, who would I become?

I felt a tugging at my arm. A charge nurse was shouting and pushing everyone away. The nurse's face was as bandaged as everyone else's were, if somewhat more thouroughly. She had a patch on one eye.

"The PRT contacted us. They vouch for your healing skills. I hope it's everything they say."

I sent a burst of Othalla's power through her hand as it touched me. Taking care of the nursing staff first was probably a good idea.

"I'm not as good as Panacea," I said. "But I'll do my best."

The lights were flickering on and off and she grimaced. "We've had trouble keeping power since what happened. The generators have been struggling to keep up with the load and we're having to conserve fuel. We have people on life support who will die without power, but the roads are impassible."

I wasn't sure what to say.

She led me back into the emergency department; somehow they found me a curtained space to work in. Moments later they led their first patient in.

It was the little girl from the airport, the one who had looked at me as though I was going to save her.

The residual anger inside me died suddenly. I was glad to see that she was alive, even if she had a bandage covering one eye. Her face was covered in small lines from where shattered glass had cut her skin. They hadn't even bothered to cover the cuts despite the risk of infection, most likely because they were focusing only on the most severe wounds.

She stared at me as I smiled and reached out to touch her, bestowing Othalla's gift. Granting her regeneration for two minutes might not cure everything, but I'd give it everything I had.

"Hello," I said gently. "People call me Gamble. Who are you?"

She stared at me awestruck and didn't say anything. The small injuries on her face were visibly healing as I watched, although with nothing like the speed of Sylar's regeneration. In the context of a normal person though it was a miracle.

"Did your mom get out ok?" I asked. It was a dangerous question, I knew. If her mother had died I'd likely be dealing with a small child crying out of a damaged eye. Yet part of me wanted to know. Was her mother one of the fifty I'd saved?

She nodded then grimaced, her hand reaching up to the bandage on her eye.

"I'm healing your eye," I said. "It might feel a little funny. Don't pick at it."

After the two minutes were up I started to unwrap her bandage and glancing at the eye underneath I winced and applied another instance of Othalla's power. It was another two minutes before she was healed completely.

I frowned. At four minutes a patient I wouldn't even make a dent in the patient population; I'd only heal a hundred and fifty people in the next ten hours.

There was one thing I could do better than Panacea.

"Nurse," I called out.

She stepped in and took a look at the little girl, her eyes widening. She had removed the bandages from her face and she looked much better than she had before.

"It's probably going to take two to four minutes per patient for me to heal people, but I can heal more than one person at a time. If we can arrange it, I think I can get through people really quickly."

She nodded.

It took fifteen minutes for doctors to filter in to receive healing while others were arranging a hallway for me to heal people in.

They complemented me and seemed impressed. For all Panacea's power she'd never healed more than two patients at once, and each healing took time.

There were things she could heal that I never would be able to. Cancer, for example would be worsened by my granted regeneration ability. I discussed this with the doctor, who agreed to have everyone sign waivers and releases of liability. It would slow things down but the last thing I needed were massive lawsuits when I was trying to save the world.

Finally things were ready. I stepped into a hallway where over a hundred people were sitting on the floor. Many were moaning; what painkillers that the hospital had were being heavily rationed. I could hear heated discussions between doctors and nurses over which patients needed the medications the most.

They were talking about a problem in the morgue as well. There wasn't enough space in the morgue for all the bodies, many of which were having to be stacked on top of each other in the freezer like cord wood. It wasn't procedure, but if they didn't do it bodies would start to stink and they'd become a health risk.

It was chaotic and dysfunctional from everything I could hear, compounded by the fact that until a few minutes ago the health care providers had been among the walking wounded themselves.

I reached down and as I walked I began touching people, brushing my hands across arms or shoulders. Apparently these people had been warned not to grab at me or to complain, because they were all as quiet as church mice as I moved from one to another.

It reminded me of games of Duck Duck Goose I'd played in elementary school, when I'd been happy and carefree.

It took me a minute and a half to make my way down one side the hall and then back up the other. As I did, I could hear cries of wonder from people as their injuries began to heal. I made another pass after waiting thirty seconds, and two minutes later people began rising to their feet with happy and relieved cries. Some of them were hugging each other.

Three doctors were standing at the end of the hall, staring with disbelief.

I reached them and said, "With a little organization I think we can get this under control."

They nodded and started shouting orders to the nurses, who began scrambling to make arrangements. Not everyone could be moved. Eventually it was decided that while mass healings were being arranged I would visit these people individually. That way my time would be most efficiently used.

Over the next hour I only performed two more mass healings. Now that things were moving the bigger problem was having enough workers to see that people whose problems would be made worse by my power weren't included.

I did manage to heal more than a dozen badly injured people, some hurt so badly that it required four or even five applications of my power to heal them.

As I was waiting for the next mass of people to be ready I sat at the bedside of one man who'd been hurt so badly that it had been thought he wouldn't survive.

He gripped my hand tightly as I lent him power for the sixth time in a row. Not an inch of his body hadn't been injured. The parts of his skin that would have been not covered in clothes had almost been flayed off. According to the doctors he'd only had hours to live due to the likelihood of massive infections.

Even now I wasn't sure he was out of the woods. I wasn't sure how Othalla's power worked against diseases. Did it simply speed up the immune system or did it provide some protection against disease? I had no way of knowing, which was another thing that I'd informed the doctors.

They had volunteers helping inform each new group that I was healing. Some of the volunteers were from previous groups that I had healed, which meant that it was getting easier and faster as things went along.

I could hear the copier upstairs struggling to keep up with the volume of paperwork they were having to have people sign. There were never enough pens of clipboards.

Worse, even though I'd already healed almost two hundred people more kept coming in, so floor space was at a premium.

The man on the bed before me gripped my hands and said, "You are a godsend."

He was white haired and by now most of his wounds had closed. He'd regrown skin and I suspected that he probably looked younger now than he had before he'd been injured.

"How did you get hurt so badly anyway?" I asked.

"I'm a glassblower," he said. He scowled. "I never thought someone would turn my life's work against me."

I frowned, an idea sparking in my head. "How would you like to repay me?" I asked.

This entire debacle had hurt the city I loved, destroyed lives and made people afraid. If there was a way I could give back to people I would do everything I could to make it happen.

"I don't have much money," he said, stammering. "Less now that my shop has been destroyed."

I smiled down at him. "I don't need money. I need your skills."

As I explained what I had in mind his eyes grew wider and wider, but his hand never loosened from mine.

* * *

Exhaustion was setting in after a grueling twelve hours of work. I'd healed twenty five hundred people, as near as I could estimate, and the hospital was starting to get back into running orders. They were reserving beds for people with cancers or other conditions that I might make worse.

It was likely that more people would come straggling in as fire crews and police were able to get back to work. I'd healed dozens of people who had both jobs, and it was likely to make a difference.

"Are you sure you are OK with this?" I asked the old man.

"You stopped the woman who did this, healed my neighbors and kept me from dying. Why shouldn't I do my part to help the city?"

I nodded as a truck pulled up. It was driven by Uber in his civilian identity.

"Did you get everything I needed?" I asked.

"Do you know how hard it was to get some of that stuff at this time of the morning?" he asked. "I almost had to resort to extralegal methods to get it."

I looked at him and smiled sweetly. "I'm glad you didn't have to."

"I knew some people," he admitted. "I've hired some people that your Dad knew in the past. It left me with some connections when they got other jobs."

Some of the dockworkers had worked as henchmen in the past when things had gotten particularly bad. They tended to take transient jobs, so I wasn't surprised that some of them were on the night shift at chemical companies.

"I've been draining your skills for the past few minutes," I said to the old man beside me. "Don't try to do any glassworking for at least five hours."

"All my stock has been destroyed," he said. "What am I going to try to make? It's not like people are going to trust glasswork in town for a while anyway."

With that I began to pull glass from the ball that I'd left out front of the hospital. It flew toward me and covered me, creating an outfit of spun glass. Shatterbird had used her control over the glass in her costume to fly and I didn't see why I couldn't do they same.

A moment later I was rising into the sky, and I raised my hands.

From all directions glass began to rise, every part of the city showing what almost looked like swarms of glittering insects in the light of the dawn. I kept the force I was pulling the glass with gentle; anyone who was hit by the glass wouldn't be more than mildly inconvenienced unless it caught them in the eye.

It took almost twenty minutes for the glass to converge on me, pushed into a glittering ball. I could hear the sound of Armsmaster's motorcycle in the distance. He was presumably coming to investigate something that might be panicking a few people after what had happened before.

As it approached me I pointed to the lawn in front of the hospital. Metal began to erupt from the ground, deeply rooted inside. I carefully began to use Burnscar's flames on the glass as it came to me, heating it until it was molten. I couldn't let her power control me and I thought the best way to keep that from happening was to start with limited exposure.

As the glass melted I sent molten glass down to mix with the growing tower. Mannequin's knowledge told me that there was a way to use patterns of microcracks in the glass while mixing it with certain other substances to make the glass two hundred times more durable than regular glass. I also had Mannequin's knowledge of how to create solar cells from silicates.

I was using some glass to ferry materials from the truck into the structure.

Shatterbird had never really used her powers to their full extent, but I was determined to do better than she had. I needed to use these powers for something constructive instead of destructive.

A tower was growing in front of the hospital composed of flowing glass and metal. I used the glassblower's artistic skills to turn the thing into something beautiful. Not all of the glass I was using was clear; some of it was multicolored and I used that to create a rainbow of colors.

People were gathering outside and Armsmaster was stopping. He got off his motorcycle and stared as I was finishing.

It was a tower more than two hundred feet tall and nine feet wide.

"What is this?" he asked.

"A monument," I said. "To everyone who died. It's also a solar tower that will provide power for the hospital during the day. It'll generate about nine hundred kilowatts on a sunny day, and I imagine that the hospital only uses about seven hundred. I'm going to rig up power storage for them so they don't have to depend just on generators."

"Did you ask permission to put this up?"

"Nope," I said cheerfully. "I doubt they'll turn me down, and if they do I can move it somewhere else. Mannequin had a surprising amount of architectural knowledge, I guess so he could build space habitats."

"So it _was_ you that took out most of the Nine," he said.


	52. Meeting

Are you sure this is safe?" the hospital administrator said, staring up at the tower I'd built.

"It was made using the knowledge of one of the world's greatest tinkers," I said reassuringly. "And the PRT has agreed to look it over before we hook it into the hospital's electrical systems."

"And you don't want any money for it?" he asked suspiciously.

I could understand his hesitance. Brockton Bay hadn't seem much in the way of altruism over the past few years, and in a lot of ways the world hadn't. Mannequin had been pruning the world of Tinkers who actually tried to make a difference or even just a profit. The amount of damage he'd done to human progress was incalculable.

That was over now.

"It didn't cost me anything," I said. "Except maybe three thousand dollars for some of the chemicals and equipment I needed. This isn't something I'm trying to sell you...this is a donation."

"Why?" he asked flatly.

"The city is dying," I said. "And people are dying inside your hospital because of a lack of electricity. This will keep that from happening even if there's no power in the rest of the city."

Also a hospital was the heart of a city; cities without good hospitals tended to die. By providing even a single place where a light shined in the darkness it would provide hope. Hope was something that was about to be in short supply, both because of he Nine and because of Leviathan.

A sudden thought occurred to me. I'd once heard a rumor that Endbringers were attracted to places where Capes were in conflict. I wasn't sure if it was true, but it was possible that the arrival of the Nine was what was going to attract Leviathan.

"If the PRT says it's safe I think we can accept this gift," he said. "It'll help with the energy budget anyway."

"I'm going to provide energy storage units when I get the time," I said. "Until then there are programs where you can sell excess energy to the power companies, which ought to help a little more."

He smiled for the first time, looking relieved.

"It's actually kind of beautiful," he said.

In the five hours since I'd built it crowds of people had come to rubberneck and see what I had done. The glassblower had seemingly been pleased to know that his skill had been what created this monument, and everyone else seemed to be happy with what they were calling the rainbow monument.

The police had been by and there had been some concern about reflections causing problems for drivers, but I'd taken that into account using Mannequin's skills.

I was still in shock from my conversation with Armsmaster. Apparently the bounty on members of the Nine was five million dollars a head, with the exception of Jack Slash, who was worth four times as much. I was now a rich woman even without Tattletale's stolen money.

Once this was all over, assuming the world didn't end, I'd be able to retire somewhere nice with a beach and I'd never have to work a day in my life.

Of course, being able to build things like this for a profit I might be able to get rich even without the money but it was nice to have.

After Leviathan appeared I decided I'd buy Dad a house in the nice part of town. There was no point in buying one before that because large parts of town tended to get destroyed whenever Leviathan came visiting.

I smiled at the man and said, "I don't think Brockton Bay is going to really live again until people start giving back. I wanted to make something good out of all this tragedy."

"You did more than anyone could expect last night," he said. "A few more healers like you and we'd be out of business."

"The last thing we need in the Bay is more people out of business," I said. "But I'm willing to help as long as I'm not busy trying to keep more people from being injured."

He nodded. "I'll speak to legal. There may be paperwork you need to sign in your Cape identity turning ownership of the tower over to the hospital."

I nodded. In the back of my mind I had thoughts that I might create more of these towers all around Brockton Bay. It would take a lot of glass, but I had the money to buy it outright or I could pull glass from the dumps. There were other things I could do too that would give Brockton Bay a leg up, assuming anything was left after Leviathan's visit.

If I had my way I'd rebuild the city as a shining beacon of hope, a place where new technologies were created that led humanity into the future. If I was ever able to defeat the people and creatures trying to knock everything down I'd be able to accomplish it.

"I have to go," I said. "I'll speak to you later about all this when the lawyers have drawn up the legal papers."

With that I floated up into the air and I was gone.

I was going to have to rethink my outfit; the glass dress that I was now wearing moved like normal cloth, but it sparkled like diamonds in the sun. I'd had a little girl approach me earlier in the day asking me if I was a Disney Princess.

Explaining that there wasn't any Disney princess with a gown made of glass or even ice was more than I could be bothered with, so I simply smiled and went with it.

I flew toward the Rig, calling ahead with my phone as I headed in their direction so they could lower their forcefield. I could bypass it through the mirror universe but it was rude to show up unannounced at the home base of someone who was a nominal ally.

I'd healed enough of the PRT agents that I was recognized as I landed.

"New outfit, Ma'am?" one agent asked.

They all had faceless masks making them hard to identify, but I'd heard his voice before.

I forced myself to smile.

"I don't like to stick to one look too much. If we're going to change the world, why not change ourselves first?"

With my powers I was the essence of change. I was able to do things now that I'd never been able to do before so why shouldn't I take advantage of it?

"Someone will take you to Conference Room Three," he said. He hesitated. "You healed my nephew and his mother last night at the hospital. I'd like to thank you for that."

I shrugged. "Someone has to be looking out for the city."

Panacea had been taken for granted when she'd been here, possibly part of the reason she'd looked so downtrodden and exhausted. The fact that she could only heal one person at a time also possibly contributed. It would have taken her much longer to have healed as many people as I had last night, although she would have been much more thorough and possibly healed people of cancers and everything but brains.

It was less than five minutes before someone escorted me upstairs. They'd already repaired the hole Sylar had left in the wall upstairs, probably using some kind of Tinkertech trickery they hadn't made available to the public. The ability to build things quickly could make a huge difference in a place like Brockton Bay, especially in the aftermath of an Endbringer attack.

It occurred to me that I should probably find Accord in Boston and take his powers. There were rumors that he had all kinds of plans to repair the country, plans that conspiracy theorists claimed were being ignored because the fat cats in power didn't want to lose their place in a world that was better. How much of that was simply being spread by Accord and his minions I wasn't sure, but supposedly Accord had amazing planning skills.

I was going to need that if I was going to make a difference.

The elevator seemed to take forever as we reached the conference room.

As I stepped into the room I was surprised to see several men in business suits there that I had never seen before, along with a heavyset man who looked like he was in charge. He had thick eyebrows and a military bearing.

My stolen ability to read body language suggested that he didn't particularly like me, although I wasn't sure why.

Armsmaster, Miss Militia and Assault were also waiting for me, along with a statuesque Hispanic woman in a business suit.

Miss Militia looked startled as the dagger in her hand vanished as I approached.

"Sorry," I said. I concentrated and the dagger reappeared in her hand. "I'm still getting used to some of my new powers."

"You've gathered quite the collection of powers," the heavyset man said. As I looked at him I realized that he wasn't actually fat; instead he was muscular but barrel chested. "We'd like to know what you intend to do with them."

A glance from the Hispanic woman and he coughed. "I'm James Tagg, the new Director of the PRT here. This is Director Costa Brown, the Chief Director."

"Chief Director?" I asked. My research in the past had been focused on parahumans, not on human politicians or bureaucrats.

"She's the big boss," Assault said. "The big cheese...the big Kahuna."

A glance from Miss Militia made him shut up, but I found myself stiffening as I realized that I was facing the leader of the entire PRT.

Director Tagg stared at me as though he was waiting for an answer.

"I plan to kill the Endbringers and save the world."

"It's been tried," Chief Director Costa Brown said dismissively. "And it's never worked."

"It hasn't been tried by me," I said. "I might not be able to do it by the next Endbringer fight, but I'm getting stronger every day..not just the powers I'm gaining, but in experience. I've got three Tinkers under my belt, with two of them being the best in their fields. The more of them I add the more I'm going to be able to accomplish things than none of them would be able to accomplish alone."

"You've almost drained this city dry of parahuman talent," Director Tagg said. "What happens when you get hungry for more?"

"I'll go to Boston," I said. "Then New York, then Washington D.C. I'll drain every villain I can find, and then when they gang up against me I'll drain them all."

"No one is invincible," Chief Director Costa Brown murmured. "There are powers out there that can counter anyone under the right circumstances."

"There's a reason we don't send the Triumvirate to clean up cities one by one," Director Tagg said.

"Because you're outnumbered three to one?," I asked. "Or because you need bodies to throw at the Endbringers?"

"Because even the Triumvirate can be taken down by people who have the right power sets, and they are too important to lose," Chief Director Costa Brown said. "What would happen at the next Endbringer fight if Legend or Eidolon died?"

"They will eventually," I pointed out. "They've been fighting a losing battle against the Endbringers for years, but all it takes is one bad day and you'll lose one of them."

"Then they'll die for something that means something instead of in a meaningless back alley brawl," Chief Director Costa Brown said.

There was something about her body language that was unnatural. She was good about concealing it, but my stolen skills were telling me that there was something about her that wasn't right.

"What does all this have to do with me?" I asked.

"Despite what we've said, we think you can be helpful during Endbringer fights. What you did last night was... beyond anything we ever thought Othala could do with her power."

"We'd thought she was limited to one person at a time," Tagg said, He stared at me.

"I've picked up a few powers that can...unlock the full potential of some of my other powers," I said.

There had been enough fear present last night that I could have healed the entire city. It was still palpable across the entire city with the knowledge that the Nine were in town. I wondered what the knowledge that so many of the Nine had fallen would do to that fear.

Bonesaw alone was a nightmare of indescribable proportions, as she'd shown in the airport. Jack was less of a threat to groups on his own, but he was amazing at brainwashing new members and he was a terrible threat to the common person.

The Siberian was a threat to every single person on the planet. Not even the Triumvirate was a threat to her. I needed to find a way to take her down and destroy her.

"You wouldn't be willing to provide a full list of the powers at your command?" Tagg asked smoothly. "It would help the Protectorate coordinate maneuvers with you."

"It would help the Protectorate plan attacks against me you mean?" I asked. I shook my head. "I've got a threatening power set and I'm a difficult person to control. The PRT is a political organization, and I'm sure that at some point they'll decide that I'm too much of a threat to keep around."

"Are you?" Tagg asked, his face darkening into a scowl.

"I'm getting strong enough that it would be difficult for anyone but the Triumvirate to take me down," I said. "And even then there would be a good chance that I could take their powers instead."

Once I would have thought it was a certainty, but if Siberian was immune to my powers then it was possible that Eidolon or Alexandria would be as well.

"People are going to think that they can use my father against me, with his being the obvious weak link. He's less durable than I am and he'd be easy to bundle away to an undisclosed location and held in a secret place."

"I want to be a hero," I said. "But anyone who tried to use my father against me will regret it. I will move heaven and earth to make them pay. I will do everything I can to eliminate them from the planet, even if it means the end of the world."

"If it means the end of the world your father wouldn't make it anyway," Tagg said.

"I don't negotiate with terrorists," I said firmly. "If you want my cooperation ask for it. I want to be a hero and I'm perfectly willing to work with you, but if you come after me I'll fight."

"No one is planning to attack you," Chief Director Costa Brown said smoothly. "There is just a little concern that some of the powers you have taken can be considered...destabilizing."

"Burnscar was sent to a psychiatric hospital because her abilities affected her sanity," Tagg said bluntly. "You can imagine our...concern that someone with your potential may have them now, especially since you are suspected of multiple murders from a time when your mind was presumably completely your own."

The fact that they knew sent a cold chill down my spine. I'd hoped to hide it from the world, but here they were confronting me about it. Worse, he was bringing up my murders, undoubtedly as a threat and a negotiating tactic. If they really meant to bring me in for them I'd be facing a very different response.

Considering that they couldn't afford to even send the Triumvirate after me and any conflict between me and their lesser heroes would probably end up with my winning, they didn't have much leverage at all. This was simply a ploy.

Rage flashed through my mind. I wasn't unstable, and for him to imply that I was was an insult. Part of me wanted to simply cleanse the room with fire. It would be soothing, removing the guilt and fear and it would make these bureaucratic insects vanish.

I could see Armsmaster and Miss Militia stiffening. I wondered if I'd given something away through my own body language. I forced myself to relax and sigh.

"I wasn't fully aware of the drawbacks of her power before I took it. There are other powers that I have that I've resolved never to use; this may have to be one of them."

"She was noted as suffering from depression if she went without using her power," Tagg said leaning forward. "Do you really think you can go without using it?"

"Then I'll do something productive with it!" I said sharply. "I used it this morning on the Rainbow tower without any repercussions."

"You bring that up," Tagg said. "Are you planning on doing other renovations of the local landscape without asking anyone of getting proper permits? The PRT supervises tinkers for a reason; they all seem to think that their latest invention is going to be the one that will change the world, but there are always unintended consequences."

"One of the benefits of not working for you is that I don't have to answer to you," I said coldly. "I am now a fairly wealthy woman so I don't need your money. I have enough power for an entire city of Capes, so I don't really need your backup. The question I should be asking myself is why I'm even here at all. What do you have to offer me?"

"We have experience," Director Costa Brown said smoothly. "Decades of experience gathered by hundreds of dedicated people."

I nodded cautiously at that. It was one of the main reasons I'd turned to them in the first place.

"Also, you can't be in more than one place at once," she said. She hesitated. "At least as far as we know."

With Crusader's ghosts that was somewhat debatable, but there were range limits.

"We have eyes everywhere, both physically and electronic. Law enforcement is our eyes and our hands. We have resources that even with the kind of money you now have will take time for you to build up. We have laboratory equipment and raw materials already in storage."

"It took months for me to assemble my first lab," Armsmaster said soberly. "And while you don't have the budgetary concerns of most new tinkers it'll take a while for companies to ship you what you need. I'm not sure that we have that kind of time."

"Our precogs can't see the Endbringers directly," Tagg said. "But they can see their effects on the world. According to them we have less time before Leviathan attacks than we thought."

"We've got less than a week," Chief Director Costa Brown said.


	53. Interlude Greg

"I thought we weren't supposed to be out patrolling," Specs said. "On lockdown what with Sylar and the Nine."

"Director Tagg says it's important for us to be seen in public," Vista said. "People are freaking out over this Slaughterhouse thing and they need to see that we're out there protecting them."

Seeing his skeptical look she said, "Besides, I can get us away if anything happens."

Vista looked at him entreatingly. She'd been stir crazy since the directive had come down for them to circle the wagons. Being a hero was _important_ to her in a way that it had never really been for him.

Greg had always thought being a hero was cool because it would be a good way to get girls to pay attention to him. However in his fantasies he'd always had a power that mattered. He'd been a Tinker with skills like the original Hero. He'd been a male Alexandria or been the next Legend, attack people from miles away.

When the people had come to him offering superpowers, he'd felt like he'd won the lottery. He'd finally get a chance to be something more than just the one loser at school who was one step above Taylor Hebert on the totem pole.

Why he'd thought powers would make a difference he wasn't sure. He'd been a coward in school; he'd liked Taylor but he had never stood up for her. He hadn't even gone to a teacher in secret when she'd been stuffed into the locker and gone horribly quiet. She could have died in there and he would have been just as quiet as everyone else.

Greg looked down at his hands. Kid Win had given him some sort of futuristic ray gun and he'd been training him in using it, but his powers weren't exactly the kind that were helpful outside of groups.

He could see through things, but a gangster with a baseball bat could give him a very bad day. Even Vista, young as she was could shove his face into the floor without using any of her powers. Being beaten by a thirteen year old girl was a humiliation he'd never thought he'd suffer again, but it happened every day in training.

Vista was hardcore. He'd seen some of the scars she had when she'd thought he wasn't looking; it was terrifying to think that she'd been in fights with Hookwolf of all people, back when Hookwolf had been a thing. Physically she was weaker than he was, even if her power was impressive. The fact that Hookwolf had gotten close enough to give her scars and she'd still lived to tell about it was incredibly impressive.

Coming forward to join the Wards had seemed like a no brainer once Vengeance had eliminated almost all the villains in the Bay. Get a weekly salary and money for college for doing nothing more than posing for press conferences and strutting around in a costume impressing all the girls.

Nobody had told him about the insane serial killer wandering the city. The experience they'd all had with them in Headquarters the other day had been terrifying. Everyone had been so _fast_. Greg had still been trying to process what was happening when Sylar had put a hole in the wall and escaped.

Everything had happened in a matter of less than a minute. He'd been amazed at how fast Armsmaster and that one dead PRT guy had reacted, but Taylor had been like greased lightning.

She intimidated him now. She'd moved like nothing he'd ever seen, not even in the movies. He'd had trouble following what she was doing, for all the good it had done. She'd moved like lightning, and if she hadn't been on their side she would have been terrifying.

He still couldn't help but wonder if she didn't resent him. After all, he'd left her in the locker. He wasn't sure if he had her powers he'd have had nearly as much restraint. It'd be easy for someone like her to make people disappear, to drop them into the bottom of the Bay where no one would ever find them.

She had all the powers of the Cape who had wiped out all the other Capes in town, and a serial killer had beaten her easily.

While everyone else talked about Jack Slash and the Nine, Greg's personal boogieman was Sylar. He'd never met the others, but he'd seen what Sylar could do.

"I'm just not sure I can make much of a difference," he admitted to Vista. "I'm just a normal guy."

"Normal guys do ninety percent of the changing in the world," Vista said sympathetically. "Most of what we do is built on their backs."

When he'd been normal it had felt like norms didn't accomplish anything. The PRT had felt like buffoons, and when people had talked about the gangs it had only been the parahumans that seemed to matter. It was generally accepted that a hundred norms wouldn't matter against a single powerful parahuman.

A guy with x-ray vision who couldn't even see through metal if it was very thick was barely even a parahuman.

Greg scowled. "Fine."

He wasn't sure that Tagg really had ordered them out on patrol, although it sounded like something a bureaucrat would do. Vista was his teammate though, and she'd just keep nagging him until he agreed.

Being cooped up all this time had been stressful anyway. He needed a little fresh air himself.

If Sylar came Vista could just warp them away, or whatever she did. He hadn't really had that many chances to see her skills in action since he'd joined just before the lockdown. He'd seen it in training, of course. Some of the things she'd done with the power were amazing.

At least his costume had minor armor built in. As long as a gangster didn't shoot him in the head he ought to be all right long enough for Vista to give them a very bad day.

He followed Vista to the top of the rig, confirming his suspicions that this wasn't an officially sanctioned mission. If they were going to patrol they'd have left from the front, which would mean passing by actual PRT guards. The guards would undoubtedly report what they were doing to their superiors.

Well, Vista was his superior and if they got in trouble he'd be able to truthfully say that she'd lied to him. He'd heard that Armsmaster had some kind of lie detector in his suit; if they got in trouble it would be on Vista's head not his.

He had been looking forward to strutting around town in his new suit anyway. It was blue with shapes like eyes all over it. He'd been unsure of advertising his lack of real powers both in his name and in his costume, but marketing had insisted.

He was getting an action figure with a little gun!

The fact that the gun only stunned instead of doing any real damage wouldn't be any consolation if they met a surviving member of the Nine. Fortunately Taylor had wiped out most of them.

Vista gestured and the world suddenly warped around them taking them to the shore. It wasn't the smooth transition he would have expected from when he'd seen Vista's powers before, but maybe transporting people was different.

They started walking. Vista was uncharacteristically quiet and intent, staring at the world around them.

"So are we supposed to be doing anything?" Greg asked.

He'd hoped they'd go down to the boardwalk, where all the rich attractive girls went. They were supposed to be seen after all, but he hadn't seen anyone so far. All he saw was scenes of devastation; wrecked cars left in the street, windows that were empty of glass.

At least there was no longer glass everywhere. Taylor had apparently taken care of that this morning when she'd built some kind of freaky tower in front of the hospital.

Vista shook her head shortly. What she was looking for he wasn't sure, but she seemed like she was actively searching.

Finally she stopped. "What do you see inside that building?"

She'd stopped at a specific building, and Greg had to wonder exactly what her purpose with all of this was. The buildings were metal, but the walls were thin enough that he could see through them. He stiffened.

Inside he could see Jack Slash and Bonesaw and the Siberian, along with an older man he'd never seen before.

"We need to get out of here," he said urgently. "The Nine are in there."

His radio suddenly switched on.

"Specs!" It was Vista's voice on the radio. "Are you off base? We're still in lockdown and the new director seems like a real hardass."

He felt a sudden chill run down his spine. He turned to look at Vista, who was smirking.

A moment later the radio was ripped out of his suit and he felt himself in the grip of a force that felt like he was in a vice. He couldn't move and he couldn't breathe.

Vista gestured with her other hand and there was a booming sound against the side of the warehouse.

The Siberian exploded from the wall only to stop, staring. The sight of two Wards standing there alone probably made her suspicious.

Vista pulled out an antique looking pocket watch.

"Come out, come out wherever you are," she said in her sweet voice as she opened the watch.

Jack Slash and Bonesaw stepped through the hole.

"Two Wards come to offer themselves to us?" Jack asked. He looked around. "Where are the rest of the cannon fodder."

"It's just the two of us," Vista said, smirking. She pulled out a sheet of paper from the pouch at her belt. She glanced at it then nodded.

She shifted into Sylar's form, and Greg felt a sudden wetness in the front of his costume.

"If you would pardon me for a moment," Sylar said. "I've got something I need to do."

A moment later Greg screamed as he felt the worst pain of his life. Blood obscured his vision, but he was able to see what looked like the top of his head fall to the ground.

Sylar stepped lose to him, and Greg felt his body dropping partway to the ground. Sylar was staring at the top of his head humming under his breath. The look on his face was clinical and detached.

Everything started fading to black, and Greg felt a sudden, bitter feeling of regret. He'd never even gotten to kiss a girl much less be a hero.

Instead, like everything else in his life he'd ended up as a victim.

Everything faded to black.

The sound of clapping interrupted his satisfaction.

Feeding the hunger had always given him a deep, abiding kind of pleasure that couldn't be matched by anything else in life. Not sex, not love, not even personal achievement could match the simple pleasure of understanding things.

This, however, would be the last time that people would have to die for him to have that kind of thrill. With this ability he could gain the powers of others without the very mild guilt from having to end them.

It would still take time, of course. Examining and understanding brains was something that took a moderately extended period, not something that could be accomplished in combat for example. But given his ability to change shape it shouldn't be too hard to get close enough to people to take their powers without harming them.

He actually liked some of the Wards, for example. Vista was pleasant to be around even if Clockblocker had been an annoyance. He'd been tempted to end him simply for the quality of his jokes.

Hiding from Gallant had been the hardest part. The fact that he didn't feel anything in particular most of the time had probably helped with that, along with the fact that he'd tried to e in his presence as little as possible.

He'd tried being a good man in the past, but the call of the Hunger had always been at the back of his mind. He'd been like an alcoholic on the wagon. Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic, even if thirty years passed.

Being forced to do the things he did had been hard at first, but killing had gotten easier and easier over time. By now he only felt residual guilt, more of a feeling that he should feel guilty than actual guilt.

Still, this was a major advantage in his competition with Taylor Hebert. He'd be able to gain powers like she did, effortlessly and without a trail. He'd be able to visit other Protectorate strongholds in other cities and by the time he returned he'd be far more powerful than she what with her moral qualms and reluctance to take powers from a quarter of the parahuman population.

He wouldn't even be here if the damned paper he'd drawn hadn't said he would.

Still, gaining the powers of the remnants of the Nine would be a good start to his new life. He might even take a different form and collect the bounty on them. Taking Peter Petrelli's form would be a delicious irony.

"What a delightful way to make your application to our group," Jack said. "We've been wanting to meet you ever since we heard about your work."

"The Boogieman of Brockton Bay," Bonesaw said in her sweet, childish voice. "At least among the parahumans. The PRT didn't want the norms to hear you even existed, did they."

The Siberian didn't say anything. A close look at her and Sylar started.

"A projection?" he said. "that's why nobody has been able to beat her after all this time. I'm guessing the fellow you've got inside is the real Siberian."

She growled and stepped forward, but Sylar didn't flinch. He smirked.

"I think you both have the wrong idea about me," he said.

"Oh?" Jack asked.

"You destroy for the pleasure of destroying, hurting people for no reason at all." Sylar said.

"And you don't?"

"I hurt people because I have to," Sylar said. "Because I'm hungry and the only way to satisfy my hunger is to feed."

"Ride with us and we'll feed you more than you could ever imagine." Jack said. He smiled ingratiatingly.

"Why would I even need you?" Sylar said. "Especially now?"

He gestured at the corpse that now lay on the ground, blood pooling everywhere from the remains of his head. Bonesaw looked fascinated, as though she was anxious to get to work on the corpse.

Perhaps there was room for three more murders on his resume.

"We've got the experience," Jack said. "Decades of experience at evading the PRT, of living life like kings in a world of pawns."

They thought he was some kind of new cape. How quaint.

He'd always heard that Jack was an expert at manipulating Capes. He'd wondered if this had been part of his power that no one had noticed. Simply being able to slash people with blades at a distance hadn't seemed like enough for the man to rule over some of the worst monsters the world had ever seen for decades.

He smirked.

"I haven't come for your _experience_ ," Sylar said.

He flipped his watch open. The music from that movie started playing, echoing tinnily in the air. He'd gotten the watch originally to troll Taylor Hebert but he'd come to be quite fond of it. His father had been a watchmaker, and he found the complexity of watches to be soothing for his power. He'd sometimes stare at the inner workings of a watch to calm himself when he felt stressed or upset.

"Although you could say that I'm here to pick your brains."

Jack looked startled, as though he couldn't believe that Sylar wasn't falling for his line.

"I don't think you understand where you are standing," Jack said. "The Siberian put a hole in _Alexandria_."

"But I know her weakness," Sylar said. "All I have to do is get to the crunchy bits and I'll be perfectly fine."

Bonesaw threw something at him.

She stared at him intently, as though something was supposed to happen.

"I'm immune to disease and poisons," Sylar said. "A gift from an immortal girl I once knew."

She looked suddenly disappointed and stamped her foot.

"Are you sure you don't want to join?" Jack asked. "With so few of us left the trials wouldn't be all that hard."

"I'll never join a group where I'm subservient to anyone," Sylar said coldly. "If you want to step down as leader I might think about it."

He was lying of course. The Nine had everyone in the world out to kill them. For all Jack's claims of living like a king, the Nine had been on the run for decades. While they'd been successful in their random acts of terrorism there had been constant attrition in their numbers.

Having access to the PRT files on most known parahumans had been a godsend. He now knew where to go to cherry pick the parahumans with the best powers.

He knew Legend's address for example. It would be easy to pose as his personal cook, there to feed him and his husband.

Eidolon was particularly interesting. Having every power, even if only in a limited way would be the holy grail for someone like him.

"I suppose if you are determined to die that we must oblige you," Jack said.

He turned to the Siberian only to scream as blood appeared across his forehead.

The Siberian sprang into action even as Bonesaw began to drag Jack away with a surprising amount of strength for such a small child.

Sylar made a note not to underestimate little girls anytime soon. Vista had impressed him.

The battle was on.


	54. Spike

I was considering my next words carefully.

As irritated as I was with their obvious good cop bad cop act, I was more concerned with the subtle hints of wrongness I was getting from Chief Director Costa Brown. I hadn't been able to put my finger on it at first; she was just oddly strange.

It had taken almost ten minutes of a meeting that had grown progressively more boring before I realized what it was. She was too still.

Ordinary people moved slightly all the time, correcting themselves as their bodies moved in part because their muscles had a lower threshold of detecting deviations. They would shift out of position and their muscles would contract to correct that.

Costa Brown had none of that. She sat as still as a statue, her only movement being that of her chest rising up and down. She hadn't shifted positions once during the entire meeting. Was her chair that comfortable? Mine wasn't, and I had a shell of metal covering my butt under my skin.

I had a sudden realization. I'd never be able to go through airport security again, not and keep my secret identity. There were probably workarounds; maybe I could get a power to create a normal clone body.

The door burst open suddenly and we all tensed, even Costa Brown.

"Sylar and the Siberian are fighting by the docks," Vista said. She was breathless as though she'd been running. "Jack Slash looked injured according to witness accounts. Specs went off base, and the tracker in his suit has him in the same place the fighting was last seen."

Greg Vedar had been the fourth bane of my life, although in a different way than the trio. He'd made his attraction to me blatantly obvious, but he'd never done anything to protect me, not even tell a teacher about the locker. Despite that I didn't want him dead.

Other than Sophia and the Nine there wasn't anyone I wanted dead.

"It's been a good meeting people," I said. "But I have a tiger to tame and a serial killer to bring to heel."

"What makes you think you'll do any better than last time?" Armsmaster asked.

"I won't have a room full of heroes to protect," I said. The last time I'd been afraid of using the mirror universe because leaving for even a short period would have let him get to the rest of them. This time I wouldn't have that kind of limitation.

"Wait," Costa brown said, but I was already switching over to the mirror universe.

I switched quickly to my Vengeance outfit. I was long past the time when being underestimated was viable, so my best option was to be terrifying.

The prospect of facing the Siberian again was daunting. Facing Sylar again was also daunting. Facing the both of them at the same time was impossible except that they weren't working together...hopefully.

This could be a ruse to draw me out. If Sylar had joined the Nine they very well might be planning to ambush me the moment I stuck my head out.

Of course, if I started thinking like that I'd never bother leaving my bedroom. I'd be gathering powers forever, assuming I didn't become so paranoid that I thought every opportunity was a trap.

I punched my way through the plastic window of the room and a moment afterward I was airborne. I'd infused this costume with glass as well and this made flying easy.

A moment later I shifted into the regular world, once I was outside the range of the Protectorate force field.

I needed to pick up a cape with enhanced vision at some point, but for the moment hearing was enough. I could hear the sound of someone crashing through the wall of a building even though it was blocks away.

Getting there took me almost a minute. By the time I crested the top of a warehouse to see Sylar and the Siberian, it looked like Sylar wasn't doing very well. One of Sylar's arms had been ripped off, and the Siberian was beating him with it.

It was growing back with a startling speed, but it didn't look like Sylar was winning the fight.

The Siberian threw the arm away.

"Decapitate him!" I heard Jack's voice scream from somewhere in the warehouse.

A force field appeared over him, but it popped as it was struck by the Siberian. Sylar suddenly exploded outward, a hot wind blowing over me. The moment it hit me I felt my cells start to die. It was radioactive!

The warehouse didn't fare nearly as well. The walls collapsed and there was a scream from inside.

The Siberian flickered in and out of existence before reappearing.

My mind raced. Did she have a variation of my mirror universe ability, or was she a teleporter.

Was she a projection? If she was that meant that her controller was inside the warehouse and he'd been injured by the explosion.

The Siberian lunged forward, stabbing Sylar in the eye and ripping it out.

I jumped to the mirror universe and headed for the warehouse. If I could get the jump on them maybe I could get Bonesaw and Jack Slash and maybe even the controller of the Siberian before she could get to me. If I was lucky she'd decapitate Sylar and I'd be a double winner.

Flashing inside the warehouse, I saw Bonesaw working feverishly on a Jack slash who looked as though his brains were falling out of his head.

A middle aged man who looked like he hadn't been taking care of himself was throwing up, leaning heavily against the side of a van.

I could feel my own cells dying, although between Lungs regeneration and my own biokinesis I was going to be fine. They'd been five times closer than I had been to the source of the explosion; that meant that I'd gotten less than a hundredth of the initial radiation they'd been exposed to. The inverse square law was a lifesaver.

Furthermore I had a layer of metal under my skin. Most of the damage was done to my skin; my internal organs had been protected. They didn't have any protection other than whatever modifications Bonesaw had already made to them, and I suspected that she hadn't planned for radiation exposure.

They were dead people walking if Bonesaw didn't come up with a cure quickly.

It looked as though she was still moving even though the man was visibly dying. Maybe she'd done something to herself that protected her better than the others. It's what I would have done had I been her.

It didn't matter. I appeared next to Jack and grabbed his leg.

I tried to take his power but it was too late; he was already dead. Bonesaw was still working on his for some reason, so I grabbed her by the arm and I pulled.

Her power was suddenly mine. I could understand things about the body that I had never understood, and the path to doing amazing things with my biokinesis was laid out before me.

She stared at her hands and she screamed.

This alerted the dying man by the van. If he really was the Siberian's projector then I needed to hurry. He didn't look like he was doing well.

I raced toward him only to feel a tremendous impact as something hit me with more force than a freight train. I flew across the room, smashing all the way through the wall on the other side of the warehouse.

The Siberian bounded after me, but she wasn't up to her usual standards. She would stop sometimes, looking as though she wanted to throw up.

I switched to the mirror universe and I raced inside.

Bonesaw was sitting on the floor, looking as though she didn't know what to do. The man had crawled under the van, not that that was going to make a difference at all.

I flashed forward, and as the Siberian tried to grab me from behind I shadowed through her fingertips.

There was nothing she could do to me if I didn't want to be harmed, and right now I had no one I had to protect. It would take the PRT time to organize themselves and get here, assuming that they bothered to come at all, considering that the Siberian was out of their league.

I became solid again, this time grabbing the bottom edge of the van and heaving. The Siberian's claws pierced me in the side, shredding my internal organs.

It stared at me, its expression unreadable, almost as though it was waiting for my expression of fear or pain before it ended me forever. It'd claws were around my heart.

I knew, however that Lung's powers would let me survive even without my heart for a time; long enough to survive, especially if I managed to stay conscious long enough for Bonesaw's knowledge to amplify my biokinesis.

Its eyes widened as it looked down at my hand, which was resting on it's creator's leg. A moment later it popped out of existence.

Hearing the sound of Armsmaster's motorcycle approaching, I pulled out my cell phone and dialed quickly. I'd have to replace it after this; metal absorbed radiation and became radioactive itself. I'd have to eliminate the metal under my skin and replace it with new metal, which was now a trivial matter with my new knowledge.

"Yes?" Armsmaster's voice said.

"Stay away," I said. "Sylar triggered a small nuclear explosion and the area is covered in lethal amounts of radiation. The Nine are dead. I haven't checked on Sylar yet."

"Even the Siberian?" he asked, sounding surprised.

"She was a projection," I said. "Her master is dead."

He cursed under his breath, probably at the number of Capes who would now be alive if they'd only known the Siberian was a projection.

"Will you be all right?" he asked.

"I was further from the blast," I said, "And a combination of regeneration and other abilities are helping to deal with the damage."

"Find Sylar and deal with him," he said. "Do that and we can call today a huge success."

I nodded.

I could hear him moving feebly outside. He wasn't dead.

Rising to me feet I crushed my phone in my hand. Irradiated now it'd be a danger to anyone I got close to. I would probably need a decontamination bath; I knew exactly how to do it now for some reason.

A glance at the little girl showed her slumped against Jack's body. Whatever protections she'd had against radiation had finally failed, or maybe she'd just been keeping herself going through willpower.

Stepping out into the sunlight, I saw that Sylar was struggling to his feet. He was missing an arm and a leg, and while they were growing back it looked like it wasn't happening fast enough. He looked as though he was struggling to hold onto consciousness.

I thought about taking his power, but the risk of his Hunger was too much for someone with my power. Besides, if my experience with Victor was any guide I'd only get his base power, not any of the many powers he'd copied.

The risk wasn't worth the reward.

A massive vice seemed to grab me as his telekinisis took hold once again. Even though I was a little ramped up from my interaction with the Siberian I still couldn't move.

I switched into the mirror universe and the pressure went away. I ducked back inside the warehouse and I moved to the wall on which Sylar was leaning.

Returning to the real world, I formed a massive spike with Hookwolf's power. I could hear his heartbeat on the other side of the wall; undoubtedly he could hear mine as well. However unlike me he didn't have enhanced speed; by the time he reacted it was too late.

Shoving the spike through the wall I felt it impact something fleshy.

Cautiously I moved around to the door. Sylar's regenerative abilities were phenomenal and if I'd only hit him in the shoulder I had no doubt he could attack me.

He was stuck to the wall, the spike going straight through his head. It was horrifying seeing a spike emerge from his eye, but it had had to be done. Fighting Sylar on an equal basis was stupid. He'd been highly successful by attacking from the shadows; if he could do it I could do it as well.

Besides, attacking after someone was injured from another fight was a classic technique of many predators in the animal world. The fact that I was a little disappointed about not getting to really unleash my full powers and see what I could really do was overshadowed by the fact that I was massively relieved to have the problem he represented gone.

He'd killed Crystal and now I'd killed him. Justice was served.

I waited for almost two minutes, but his previous rate of regeneration had completely stopped. I reached forward and snapped the spike off the wall, then winced. His body was still radioactive and the rate at which my body's cells started dying increased at a massive rate as I approached his body.

I stepped quickly away, aware that I was going to have to do some serious work on my body or I would have problems from radiation poisoning. Fortunately Bonesaw's powers had all sorts of knowledge about how to deal with radiation.

In the meantime...I needed a way to move the bodies. Making the PRT come for them in the middle of a hot zone wasn't going to make anyone happy.

Experimentally I summoned the Siberian. I froze as she appeared.

She shared superficial similarities to the woman I had just vanquished forever. She still had black and white stripes all over her body and she was still completely naked. That was where the similarities ended, however.

She was taller than the old Siberian had been, and more willowy. The sadistic look that had been on the Siberian's face wasn't on hers, replaced with something that was far more upsetting for me.

This Siberian looked like my mother.

I stared at her in horror. Completely nude she would be a declaration to the world of my identity, assuming that everyone knew she was a projection. Even if they didn't, my father would never forgive me for parading a nude version of my mother around for the entire world to gawk at.

The look of sympathy on her face was the worst of all. It was exactly the kind of look Mom had given me when I was hurting.

I dismissed her with a gesture. There was no way I could use her unless it was absolutely necessary.

Crusader's ghosts appeared. Apparently they could handle once living flesh as easily as currently living flesh because they bundled up the bodies of Jack Slash, Bonesaw, Siberian's controller and Sylar and placed them in the van. I put the van in neutral and I used Rune's power to push the van several blocks to the edge of the territory.

I saw Armsmaster's motorcycle in the distance. I used Stormtiger's powers to carry my voice to him.

"This van has the bodies of the Nine and Sylar. Sylar's in particular is highly radioactive, so special care will have to be taken while autopsying them. This entire area needs to be cordoned off for a block in all directions. I'm radioactive myself, so I need to take measures. I will see you all when I can."

Feeling the cells of my skin dying I realized that I needed to get away. Radiation damage was cumulative, and while the metal under my skin had initially protected me it was now radioactive. With time it might even overwhelm Lung's regenerative abilities.

I switched over to the mirror universe and I returned to the sight of the original blast. This area was already contaminated, so dropping more contaminated materials in the area wouldn't make much of a difference.

I flashed fire, burning my clothing completely off. I could choose whether my clothing was protected or not, and this time I chose not. My clothes would be a danger to myself and everyone around me.

The particles of my clothes would be dangerous as well, but this entire area was going to be off limits for a while, at least until a tinker did something to reverse the effects.

I forced the metal under my skin to the surface, where I allowed it to drop to the ground, replaced piece by piece with new metal. I considered simply peeling my flesh and skin off and letting it regenerate on its own. That would solve my decontamination problems although I would need to do the same with my hair.

I wondered if my sudden lack of concern for ripping my own face off had something to do with Bonesaw's powers. I briefly considered adding cybernetic implants, but I couldn't conceive of any that I couldn't do better for myself with biokinesis.

Finally deciding that tearing my skin off wasn't all that much worse than pulling the metal out I did just that, leaving a pile of radioactive flesh that should have been disgusting but that instead I found vaguely interesting. I had some ideas about what I could have done with that flesh, assuming it hadn't been radioactive.

I'd need to build some mechanical spider assistants of course; more hands meant faster surgery after all. Maybe I could grow myself extra arms; I could always hide them under a jacket until I needed to use them.

The possibilities were endless!

I could even use it on my allies; Armsmaster seemed like a practical sort of fellow who wouldn't mind a few enhancements. I wouldn't mind getting a look at whatever enhancements Bonesaw had done to the bodies of the Nine. I'd have to ask the PRT for copies of the autopsies they'd already done.

I could probably make Armsmaster faster and stronger even without his armor. I could reduce his need for sleep and even retard the aging process a little.

There might be others in the Protectorate who shared a similar practical mindset. I'd decided once that I couldn't take their powers, but no one said that I couldn't improve them.

I might even be able to take a cue from the Travelers and create clones of the heroes who had powers I wanted. I could take the powers from the clones guilt free, especially if I made the clones without minds.

Of course, the only way I knew how to make clones took time to mature. There was a cape in Boston, Blasto who I'd heard knew of a faster way.

Surely the PRT wouldn't mind me asking members of the Protectorate for a cheek swab in return for my assistance.

When I was done and my skin grew back, everything felt clean and new. I carefully stepped back from the radioactive pile of refuse. I made sure to move a couple of blocks away before I summoned my nice clean Gamble outfit from the pocket dimension.

I reappeared in the real universe.

It was a relief that Sylar was dead. No one came back from a three foot spike projecting through their brain. It would be smooth sailing from now until Leviathan.


	55. FBI

People went crazy. I had a hard time understanding it. The explosion hadn't amounted to more than one or two tons of TNT, less than a ten thousands of the bombs used in Hiroshima. Radiation effects only spread in a three block radius in all directions.

Sylar's body was still too hot to handle, but government thinkers figured out that whatever was causing his radiation had a half life of one day. The autopsy was set for nine days from now, at which time the radiation would be one five hundredth of what it was now, decreased to a safe level. In the meantime he was in a PRT freezer. The autopsies of the others were already being performed with the aid of spider bots I graciously provided. The fact that the spider bots also sent a copy of what happened in the autopsies to my personal computer was something the PRT didn't need to know.

The legion of PRT agents surrounding the area wearing Hazmat suits and waving Geiger counters around was enough to alert even the most drugged out citizen that something was terribly wrong. I could have told them with both Bonesaw and Mannequin's knowledge that the explosion had likely been very clean and that it would be limited in scope.

To the uninformed public that didn't make any sense at all. Any kind of nuclear explosion was terrifying. People began to leave the city in droves, and while the PRT could have tried to calm the public, they didn't.

Leviathan was due in three days, after all, and a city with fewer people was a city that was easier to defend.

Mannequin had knowledge of how to clean up radioactive spills from his days as Sphere. As Sphere he'd had the knowledge to build space habitats and spacecraft. I now had inherited that knowledge and I planned to use it to help everyone.

Unfortunately some in the PRT seemed to blame me for the debacle. I tried to explain that I'd been a simple bystander but Tagg wouldn't have it. He would allow only PRT approved tinkertech solutions, even when I reasonably protested that the Protectorate didn't have any capes as good as I was.

I contemplated building a bomb that would absorb radiation instead of emit it.I wasn't sure however how people would react to the sound of a second explosion in the same area.

Men in dark suits appeared on the evening of the second day. They were government anti-terrorism experts in to investigate. Their department wasn't all that big in the scheme of things; Terrorism had never been as popular here as it had been on Earth Aleph, possibly because people were too worried about Endbringer attacks to worry about killing their fellow humans.

Would that change if I destroyed the Endbringers?

The one thing I was learning about the world was that there were unintended consequences for everything. Part of the reason the PRT was so controlling with inventions was for just that reason. They were convinced that the next thing a tinker invented was always going to be a gray goo that was going to devour the planet.

Fortunately, with the exception of Squealer all the Tinkers I'd stolen powers from were the tops of their field. I created a plan for the radiation cleanup, drafted it and sent it to the PRT. Hopefully they would listen. If they didn't I'd take care of it in the middle of the night.

I had Uber and Leet gather the materials for the antiradiation bomb. It was difficult as they were busy preparing the ship to be seaworthy. With Leviathan coming it was an almost certainty that the ships in the Bay would be wrecked. Losing the lab was unacceptable, so the plan was for Uber and Leet to take a trip down south to Florida for a couple of weeks until everything calmed down.

The outside of the ship still looked like a wreck, but I built spider bots that would work on the exterior while they were in transit. By the time they reached Miami they'd look like any other ship.

In the meantime the spiderbots helped repair the interior of the ship in an effort to make it seaworthy.

"I had nothing to do with the explosion," I said for the seventh time. "It was an effect generated by the man known as Sylar."

"And did you push him into taking this move, out of desperation perhaps?" the man asked.

I shook my head. "He did it right after I got there. The Siberian was about to kill him and it was a last resort, I think."

"Yet it was your spike that killed him," the man in black said.

He was eager to make an arrest, I sensed. Life in a post terrorism world wasn't kind to members of the terrorism task force, especially since most terrorism was perpetrated by parahumans and so was the purview of the PRT.

"I attacked him when he was wounded," I said. "He was too dangerous to live."

"There wasn't an official kill order," the man said. "And you attacked him from behind."

"The PRT has already cleared me," I said. "He faced a group of twelve Protectorate heroes along with PRT agents and myself and he barely broke a sweat. Did you want me to call him out and attack from twenty paces?"

I leaned forward. "Even if you think I did something wrong, what are you going to do about it? The PRT has cleared me. I think you are out of your jurisdiction."

The FBI couldn't do anything to me without Protectorate assistance, other than maybe garnishing my Slaughterhouse Nine winnings.

It had been a pleasure to realize that I was now fifty million dollars richer, counting the money from previous Slaughterhouse members but not the Tattletale money.

"People like you think they are above the law," the man muttered. "And you get away with it."

"Will you be out there facing Leviathan or the Simurgh? I will," I said coldly. "While you're huddling in a shelter hoping that people like me will keep you safe."

At the meeting Chief Director Costa Brown had told me that the PRT had been founded to keep more people from having attitudes like this man. It was there to calm people's fears and to make them think of parahumans as heroes instead of monsters who planned to take over the world.

Unfortunately many parahumans were exactly that kind of monster, and an incident like this was only likely to inflame resentments, even though the area had been deserted and there hadn't been any actual casualties, although there had been two homeless people who'd gotten radiation poisoning.

"The actual damage was only about four million dollars," I said. "I'd tell you to bill me, but I didn't do any of it. If you try to bill me I'll see you in court."

"This was a nuclear explosion on American soil," he said. "It's unprecedented. The United States has a right to protect itself."

"There have been other explosions," I said. "In Nevada and New Mexico. People used to watch the explosions from Las Vegas."

The man seemed frustrated that I couldn't see his point of view. I had to admit that my attitudes were changing since I'd gotten Bonesaw's powers. There had been a time what I'd have been horrified at the idea of tearing my own face off. Now it seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to do to avoid brain cancer.

Not that I couldn't fix that of course. It's just that not having brain caner seemed a lot more convenient.

"Nevertheless people are terrified and someone has to pay," he said.

I stared at him incredulously. He seemed to have an outsized view of his importance; apparently things were done differently in Washington DC. I'd heard that there weren't nearly as many Capes there as here.

Well, more Capes here before Sylar and I got involved.

He wasn't used to dealing with Capes; obviously he was more used to interrogating normal human subjects, browbeating and intimidating them into confessions.

"How much have you been told about my abilities?" I asked him.

"You steal powers," he said, staring at me.

"Right now I have the powers of twenty seven different Capes. Just one of the Capes whose power I have was able to keep the local PRT and every other gang in town at bay for years simply through the fear of his power. I have the powers of an entire city full of Capes, which means that I'm a little difficult to intimidate."

"You aren't more powerful than the United States government!" he said.

"I'm not fighting with the United States government. The PRT has cleared me of any responsibility for this. I'm doing this interview as a favor to you, when by all rights I should have representation because I am a minor. In point of fact, because I don't you can't actually use anything I say here against me."

What surprised me was that the PRT had allowed this ass to speak to me instead of a more seasoned investigator. My suspicion was that they were trying to make themselves look better by comparison. It was a classic con; show something entirely unacceptable and the next best thing would look much better by comparison.

The fact that I was wanting to gut him like a fish probably hadn't been part of their calculations.

"In point of fact," I said, "This is a waste of my time. I'm helping with Endbringer preparations and this is just taking time away from that."

"Preparations?"

"I have the skills of multiple Tinkers," I said. "The best in their fields. This is the first time that we've had concrete evidence of where and when an Endbringer is going to attack in advance and we're going to make the best use of it."

His face drained of color. "Here?"

"Tomorrow most likely," I said. "Although it could be as long as three days from now. Enjoy your stay in an Endbringer shelter. You'd better hope that someone like me is waiting when Leviathan comes knocking at the door."

Apparently all the Feds weren't talking to each other. I was wondering why so many FBI men were willing to come to a city on the eve of an Endbringer attack.

I rose to my feet. "This interview is over. Good luck with your life."

With that I skipped to the mirror world then stepped out of the room. I returned to the real world and then headed down to the labs. Armsmaster had graciously allowed me to use his secondary lab with Kid Win as an assistant since Uber and Leet were heading out of state.

They didn't know that, of course, but I'd told them that I was temporarily relocating my labs.

I'd even built a hologram generator to make it look like the ship was still in it's place, generated from a buoy. If Leviathan attacked in the way I thought he might it would doubtlessly be destroyed, but it was cheap and easy to make. In the aftermath of the destruction anyone would assume a missing ship was at the bottom of the bay.

Building bombs to save lives instead of taking them probably would have made Bakuda's head explode, but this was my chance to make a difference.

* * *

With four hours left until Leviathan was most likely to appear, people began to gather in the PRT headquarters. Gathering in the Rig would have been a bad idea considering that it sat in the Bay and might be one of Leviathan's first targets.

I was surprised and stunned to see Glory Girl and Panacea show up. It had been weeks since I'd seen them, and they looked much better than they had the last time I'd seen them. Both of them had picked up a tan, which seemed surprising in the wintertime Canadian wilderness.

Panacea had lost that hunted, depressed look. Instead she seemed to glow with health. Bonesaw's power whispered in my ear that gaining her power would make what we did incredibly easy. It felt like a craving, but I ignored it.

Their eyes widened as they saw me.

Glory Girl rushed over, smiling. She looked as though she was going to grab my hand before she caught herself. I could understand why she might not want to touch a power thief. I was having to actively suppress Hatchetface's powers, something I'd have to do during the battle. I had little doubt that Leviathan was immune and suppressing the powers of the other Capes would be a death sentence.

"I hear you got him!" she said. "The man who killed Mom and Crystal and everybody."

Panacea followed at a more sedate pace, but she actually looked glad to see me for once.

"I stabbed him in the head through the brain," I said. "He's down in the morgue."

"Thank you," Panacea said. "We couldn't have come back as long as he was here."

"Dragon arranged it," Glory Girl said. "They'll need Amy, although from what I hear you aren't any slouch at healing yourself."

"You'll have to tell me how you managed it," Amy said. "I'll have to admit I'm a little jealous. Just touching hundreds of people one after the other and then being done with it...it sounds like a dream."

"I've got a power that can enhance my other powers during certain times," I said. I'd been a little cagey in talking about my fear power since the PRT knew about most of my others. "I probably couldn't do it most of the time."

That was a qualified understatement. Any situation where there were hundreds of injured probably had plenty of fear to go around. At the same time I wouldn't be able to heal even three people at a time if we were isolated and alone. It was the one bad thing about the exodus from the city; with fewer people the enhancement I got from the fear they generated would be less.

At the same time I would have to protect fewer people, so I wasn't sure how it would pan out. Lung had fought Leviathan before in Asia; he hadn't won but he'd survived. The fact that I was now much more powerful than Lung could only play well in my favor.

At the same time I had little doubt that I was going to be at the center of the offensive, which meant that I was going to be at greater risk than anyone else. I was going toe to toe with the monster than was the nightmare of billions of people and all I could hope was that I did well.

"I heard you pretty much took the whole city," Glory Girl said. "Hookwolf and Kaiser and all of them. It's going to be hard to imagine the city without the Empire and the ABB."

"There's some new guy running things," I said. "Some cape I haven't heard of before. He's their only Cape though, so they won't be nearly as much of a threat as they were in the past."

I'd heard that the Empire had been gobbling up the old territories of the Merchants and the ABB. The new Empire had actually assimilated some of the ABB into themselves, with the rationalization that Hitler had allied with the Japanese.

It apparently hadn't been a seamless transition, and there were reports of fights and actual murders in the ranks.

Once this was all over, assuming the Bay was still standing I'd take care of the gangs once and for all. They were a weed that needed pruning and I was the one to do it.

"I want in!" Glory Girl said.

I realized that I must have said some of that out loud. I needed to watch how distracted I was getting. The constant tinkering over the last three days had reduced some of my stress, but it had made some of it worse. I hoped that my additions changed the usually horrible death rate of Endbringer fights.

"You guys didn't have to come," I said. "To this, I mean."

"I've got a lot of friends in Arcadia," Glory Girl said. "People with homes and families and as much as I've enjoyed staying with Dragon, this is my home."

"I'd be happy living anywhere," Panacea piped in. "But I don't want people to die here if I could have saved them."

"I've made some things that might help you have to do less work," I said.

More Capes were filtering into the room. I'd been told that during most Endbringer attacks most of the defenders were locals. That was usually because there usually wasn't enough warning to ship more than a limited number of people to the city being attacked before everyone was too busy.

But now most of the defenders were going to be foreigners. That was in part because between me and Sylar there were only a dozen other Capes in the Bay at all...fourteen now that Glory Girl and Panacea were back.

Many of them were looking at me with suspicion, and I noticed that our part of the room was given a wide berth by everyone else. Apparently no one else wanted to take even the slightest risk that I might accidentally steal their powers.

Or it might be that they didn't trust me. I was going to have to call Tattletale and see what rumors were going around about me. Hopefully nothing that I'd have to deal with. The last thing I needed was to be labeled as the girl who'd set off a nuclear explosion.

"I need to change," I said.

Before they could say anything I jumped into the mirror universe and began to switch into my Vengeance outfit. If I felt only five percent more confident as Vengeance as I did as Gamble it could make the kind of difference that would save lives.

As I returned I noticed that the crowd had suddenly grown much larger while I was gone and there now wasn't much of a space around anyone.

The entire room murmured with conversations. A wave of silence spread across the room as three more people entered the room.

Alexandria, Legend and Eidolon entered the room, and suddenly it was quiet enough to hear a pin drop.


	56. Speech

"Normally having one out of four combatants dead in an Endbringer battle is a good day," Legend said. "But this isn't an ordinary battle. We have had unprecedented warning giving us days to prepare instead of a more normal minutes or even no warning at all."

His was the voice of someone who you listened to, and I could feel a basic understanding of why from the cult leader whose skills I'd absorbed. There was something about the timber and cadence of his voice that was almost hypnotic.

It wasn't all tricks, though. Who he was and what he had meant to the world was just as important. People listened to him because he was someone who mattered. They trusted him because he was someone who had proven that he deserved to be trusted.

While Alexandria had the powers, Legend had the charisma of a Superman or a Captain America, fictional Capes that I knew about because of the Earth Aleph movies Dad had made me watch.

I was glad he was in Hawaii, far away from all this.

"That doesn't mean that it will be easy," Legend said. "Endbringer battles never are. They are the pinnacle of what it means to be a parahuman. Whether you are considered a hero or a villain in your day to day life, here and now you are a hero."

Everyone stared at him transfixed.

"It'll take luck and teamwork, but we have advantages now that we haven't had in previous battles, advantages that we hope will reduce casualties. Despite that I don't want anyone underestimating Leviathan. They are called Endbringers for a reason, and if you have never experienced one they are terrifying in a way that nothing on the planet is."

He glanced at me and then said, "Some of you may think that you are powerful, and in your hometown you may be the biggest fish in the pond. None of it matters against an Endbringer. We have never managed to kill one, and its not at all certain that we've even managed to damage one in any real and fundamental way. They feel pain and they bleed, but nothing seems to penetrate very far in. The best we have ever managed was to drive one off."

There was murmuring in the crowd at that, and I stared at him, wondering if he was trying to get people to lose courage and leave.

"Leviathan doesn't have the strength of Behemoth or the genius of the Simurgh, but that doesn't mean he isn't powerful and it definitely doesn't mean that he isn't smart. He is cunning and he will display tactics that will surprise you and that will catch you off guard."

He went on. "You may think you are fast, but he's faster than any speedster that has ever been seen on the planet. He is a master of manipulating water, able to use it to hit like concrete. There will be water on the battlefield, and he will use it in ways that will kill."

"There have been failures in the past...Newfoundland, Kyushu. Millions of people dead because of mistakes in strategy on the part of the heroes. There are places where we can afford to simply contain Leviathan until Scion shows up. Unfortunately this is not one of them."

The reminder of the failures of the past threw an immediate pall over the room. All of us remembered the horror of every attack. Some of us, me included had never known a world that wasn't an unending cavalcade of horrors.

He gestured and an image of Brockton Bay flickered onto the screen.

"Brockton Bay is built over an aquifer, which is essentially an underground lake beneath the city. We believe that he will use his control over water to begin to undermine the city. He will wear away at the soil and sand and rock even as he creates tremors and tsunamis above. Given enough time..."

We all knew what he meant. He'd try to drop the entire city into a sinkhole. If he did, no Endbringer shelter would survive, and the people inside them would drown, trapped in the darkness with no chance to even try to save themselves. He'd slaughter every person in the city.

I wasn't going to let that happen. This was my city. I could see a similar expression on the faces of most of the others, even though most of them were outsiders.

Even though this wasn't their home they were here, determined to hold the line. Every city an Endbringer took was one step closer towards humanity reaching that final night. It was one step closer to the collapse of civilization. I was glad to know that there were people willing to fight even when some would say it wasn't their business.

Legend stared at us for moment before he shook his head.

"We have to end this fast. Every wave he brings will be stronger than the last. That means that we need to keep him in sight at all times. We have to hit him and keep hitting him. Every time that he escapes us and we have to chase him is more time that he has to finish what he came here for."

"Just as importantly we have to hurt him. Killing him is a fool's dream, but he can be hurt enough that he retreats back where he comes from. Hurt him enough and it might take him longer to attack somewhere else. If you have enough power to hurt him, we need you on the front lines. If you don't, support those who can."

It was raining, and the rain was getting harder. We could hear the wind pounding at the plexiglass windows. Even with the threat of Shatterbird gone the PRT hadn't returned to glass windows. They'd continued the transition to inch thick bulletproof plastic windows. I couldn't help but think that was directed at me.

The rain was a sign that my precognition and Tattletale's predictions were right. They were a harbinger of Leviathan's arrival.

"We've never gotten through a single confrontation with an Endbringer without terrible losses. Sometimes we lose civilian lives by the thousands or millions. Sometimes we lose an entire city. Sometimes it is our greatest heroes who fall."

"But this is the greatest task that we are given, the reason that society tolerates parahumans at all. We are the light against the darkness, the bulwark against which the tide crashes. We are the line that keeps civilization alive, and without brave men and women like you the world would be lost. Every one of you is a hero today, whatever you are in your daily lives. You will be remembered."

He glanced at Armsmaster, who stepped forward.

"Those of you who have been in Endbringer fights before will recognize these," he said. He held up one of the armbands I had been working on for the past several days. "These armbands of Dragon's design are adjustable and they should be worn on your wrist. The button on the left allows you to communicate with other armband wearers. The button on the right is used to alert people of your location if you are hurt or in an emergency."

He continued. "Only Protectorate members and Endbringer veterans will be able to send messages systemwide. Everyone else will be screened by a program designed by Dragon to cut down on clutter. If you need to override this three to five second delay call out "Hard Override." Abuse of the system will mean privileges will be revoked."

"This year however," he said. "There is an additional feature to these armbands. Each armband is set to monitor life signs. If life signs cease, a small charge will explode, leaving the user in a moment of suspended time."

A cape I didn't recognize raised his hand. "What does that mean?"

"It means that you will be held in stasis, immune to all further damage even by Leviathan himself until someone comes to release you. If you have just been beheaded it probably won't be of much use. If however you have less intense damage..."

"Then someone might be able to bring us back," the Cape breathed. He glanced over at Panacea, who blushed.

"You may have heard that there is a power thief in town. One of the Capes she has stolen powers from is Bonesaw. It is not entirely impossible that even a beheading can be reversed, assuming that she survives and has enough time to work on you."

"If this works it could mean a revolution in Endbringer battles for the future. It may mean that the kinds of casualties we have seen in the past may be a relic of a bygone age. It might also mean that the Endbringers change their tactics. It's impossible to know."

Legend spoke up. "We have hope, though, that this battle may have lower casualties than battles in the past. Even Leviathan will take some time to adjust to something new."

"Those who have faced an Endbringer before stand!"

Protectorate members all stood. A third of out of town Wards stood. There was a team of corporate Capes and half of them stood as well. I didn't see any villains that I recognized, although I hadn't really studied many capes from outside the Bay.

"When in doubt, obey the Protectorate. We have the training for this, and we have decades of planning for this. The others who are standing are also the ones you should be listening to unless we directly contradict them. They have survived situations exactly like this and have the experience and instincts to help you survive as well."

"You will be divided by your abilities. Those who think they can take hits from Leviathan and survive or if you can produce expendable combatants you will be led by Alexandria and Dragon."

That was all I needed to know.

I stood up.

I'd thought long and hard about what I needed to do before I'd slipped away last night to a warehouse Downtown that was still guarded by the PRT. I'd slipped inside and released my field of null time, releasing Crawler just in time for me to steal the powers that made him what he was.

He'd reverted to a man, dead flesh sloughing off around him before I'd killed him.

For a long time I'd worried about taking his kind of power, but I couldn't afford to hold back now. People and the entire city was depending on me, ad if I wanted to survive to see Dad again I needed every advantage I could get.

I could feel his power now, crawling under my skin. It almost seemed eager, waiting in anticipation to begin modifying me into the ultimate being, no matter what that meant for my ability to live a normal life.

Hopefully I could reduce any changes that I didn't like with Bonesaw's skill and my biokinesis.

I stepped toward Alexandria, who looked me up and down.

"You think you can take a hit from Leviathan?" she asked.

I nodded, wondering why she had to ask. Unless Leviathan killed me immediately I was only going to get tougher and more dangerous as the fight continued.

" _I have the powers of Lung_ ," I said. " _Crawler, Hookwolf, Fenja._ "

I gestured and a moment later the Siberian appeared beside me. I'd figured out how to change her projection so that she wore a simple tunic and a domino mask. It wasn't much, but it was a lot better than letting the world see Mom naked. Dad wouldn't have forgiven me for that.

Alexandria stilled for a moment, and I could tell that she was tempted to take a step back but was keeping herself from it.

The other Capes in the room froze as well.

" _I took the Siberian's power_ ," I said. " _She was a projection and now she will fight beside us_."

"Can you fight while directing her?" Alexandria asked neutrally. It had to be difficult looking at someone who had killed her friend, who had injured her.

"I don't think the man who controlled her before could," I said. "But I have another power that creates ghosts that have some independence. I can give her that and continue to fight."

"And she won't return to her...previous proclivities?"

I shook my head. " _She is my creature_."

Everyone in the room relaxed, and suddenly the mood seemed to lighten. Having the Siberian on our side for once meant that everyone's chances of survival had just increased, possibly by quite a bit.

Clockblocker approached and handed me one of the armbands. He kept staring at the Siberian, and I noticed that he was careful to stay as far as he possibly could from her. She didn't get an armband as she was just an extension of me.

I'd been working on the Armbands for days, so I was intimately familiar with their functions. I quickly input my name and received a recognition response.

The PRT had been alerted about how to undo the stasis fields on all of these devices, although the means they used were markedly different than on my other stasis bombs. The last thing I wanted was for the PRT to be able to take Dad because I'd given them the keys to the kingdom.

Legend was continuing to direct people to the groups they belonged in best. Some went for support, especially the Movers. I could have qualified for that except that my services would better be used elsewhere. Some were combat capable but unable to survive a hit by Leviathan, and some were long distance attackers. Each were directed toward the appropriate set of leaders.

The Sirens began blaring in the distance and everyone tensed.

"While we aren't sure when Leviathan will attack exactly," Legend said calmly, "Our Thinkers believe that it most likely will happen in twenty to thirty minutes. We are setting off the alarms now in order to give the civilians who have chosen to remain in town time to get to their nearest shelters."

I nodded. There had been an attempt to get people to evacuate the city over the last three days even more than they already had, supposedly because of the nuclear explosion. They'd been told that cleanup efforts would be underway and that there might be danger in the meantime. They hadn't told anyone about the impending Endbringer attack because that would have engendered an even bigger panic than a small nuclear weapon.

The bomb would just kill you; an Endbringer would be cruel about it. Worse, there was a fear that informing the public might make the Endbringers show up in a different location just to spite the rest of us. There were some paranoid Protectorate Thinkers who believed that the Simurgh controlled the other Endbringers and that she knew far more about human activities than she let on.

I frowned as I looked out the Plexiglass window. I could see the Bay from here. While this place was marginally safer than the Rig, from what I knew of the tsunamis that Leviathan created this place wasn't safe at all.

Studying previous fights with Leviathan from Protectorate footage had been a good use of the extra time I'd gotten by not sleeping. Apparently Crawler's powers considered not sleeping to be damage, and now I could get by on only a couple of hours a night.

" _Would it be all right if I created a Seawall_?" I asked Alexandria in a low voice.

"What?" she asked.

" _If he hits us with a tidal wave there's a good chance we aren't far enough inland to make any difference_."

There were force fields to help protect the structure, but they'd been designed to protect against conventional weapons, not millions of tons of water. We'd be lucky if the entire building didn't collapse on top of us.

"And you think you can do something about that?" she asked. "In the next twenty minutes?"

" _Mannequin had architectural knowledge from when he was Sphere; I think it was designed to set up extrasolar colonies. I have Kaiser's powers...I'm not sure it'll completely stop it, but I think it'll help keep us all from drowning_."

She spoke into her communicator in a low voice. A moment later I was looking outside the window, and metal began to sprout from the ground. I began creating a wall, one that grew to be ten, twenty, thirty foot tall. I then began to thicken it. It was going to have to withstand the energy of thousands or maybe even millions of pounds of water. Many stone sea walls were fifty feet thick. I wasn't sure I was going to have enough time to create anything that formidable.

The wall grew thicker and thicker. Even with Krieg's power it took almost a minute to grow the thing by a foot.

Even so, it was only fifteen foot thick when I began to feel something vibrating beneath me. It was less a sound than a sensation, something so massive and powerful that the floor and the walls were vibrating. Without enhanced hearing no one else would have noticed it, but to me it was as obvious as anything.

The winds carried the sounds of rushing water to me a moment later.

" _It's coming_!" I yelled.

Everyone stared at me and I wondered why they weren't reacting. It took me a moment to realize that I'd switched into my enhanced speed mode. Everything around me had switched into slow motion, and only Velocity and a couple of the other capes were responding yet.

Now everyone heard it, a sound that was growing in scope until it sounded like the end of the world.

Everyone started to react, but it wasn't going to be enough. I could see the fear and horror on people's faces.

As thousands of tons of water hit my wall, the sound was like that of the end of the world.


	57. Toying

For a moment I thought the wall would hold. There was a massive groaning in the metal as unimaginable pressures impacted it. I heard the sounds of the metal fracturing from deep inside and I realized that it wouldn't hold.

Alexandria was paying attention. "Strider!" she barked.

A moment later we were at the top of a hill looking down on a Boardwalk that had been utterly devastated, turned into a mass of timbers and waters. I wasn't sure how the Bay was going to recover from this, and this was just the opening Salvo.

There was water everywhere, even here, carrying dead trees and shattered wood. I saw the corpse of a dog floating in the water; animals hadn't gotten the Endbringer warnings like the people had.

I saw him as well. It was almost as though it'd known where we would be, which gave credence to the idea that the Simurgh was in communication with him.

It was thirty foot tall, yet somehow it looked lean and wiry, except that his shoulders were thickly muscled. His shoulders were hunched and his arms and legs weren't built to normal human proportions. His calves and forearms were unnaturally long, and his tail was longer than I would have thought, stretching forty or fifty feet behind him.

Water streamed everywhere around him, creating an afterimage that looked startlingly like him. Heroes had been fooled by it before and so I was going to have to be careful.

His face was asymmetrical, with one eye on his right side and three eyes on the left. It stared at us with startlingly green eyes.

My eyes caught his, and it was almost like there was recognition there. It tensed, his head snapping back and forth faster than the rest of him.

A moment later it exploded into action. He was fast, even to my enhanced senses. He was a little faster than I was, even though I had two Capes with enhanced speed. He was fast enough to run on water, which it did as it started racing toward us.

He seemed to be fixated on me, and I felt a simultaneous sense of anxiety and relief. I felt anxious because this was going to be the fight of my life. I felt relief because the longer it was focused on me the fewer other people would die.

To any normal Cape it would have appeared as though it'd almost appeared in the middle of the lot of us, but I had time to see him approach and to tense, preparing myself.

My fingers danced across my thigh, forming the Rune I would need for what was coming next. The Siberian appeared beside me, and she touched me a moment before Leviathan hit me.

Ordinarily nine tons of reptile hitting any Cape at over a hundred miles an hour would send him flying. There were people behind me though, and I would make as good a missile to kill people as any piece of shrapnel.

Instead I dug my foot in and placed the entire power of Rune's telekinesis to the purpose of keeping me where I was. While it would not affect living matter, it had no problem working on the metal of my costume.

Despite my own not inconsiderable strength I slid back ten feet as it collided with me, but enhanced by the Siberian's power I felt no pain at all.

I saw Leviathan's eyes widen and it whipped its tail around to smash into the others. The Siberian was suddenly there, and in that moment the unbeatable force met the immovable object.

The Siberian should have gone flying, but one of her powers was that she ignored the laws of physics. She grabbed his tail and while it was able to pull it away it was unable to budge her.

If there could be an expression on his face it would be a look of outrage. The people behind me were just now beginning to move, human reaction times unable to keep up with the sheer speeds we were all moving at.

Leviathan looked at me and it instantly seemed to realize that the Siberian touching me had been part of my immunity. As long as the Siberian was attacking his tail she couldn't be protecting me. The fact that it was that fast on the uptake didn't bode well for any of us.

As it lunged forward, Legend's lasers arced around me to strike him in precise areas, causing him to slip and slide forward.

A massive swell of water slid by me, heading for the Capes behind me. Even if it somehow wasn't able to get by me and the Siberian physically there was nothing I could do to stop his water shadow from plowing through the masses of defenders behind me.

I heard a crashing sound from behind me; apparently Alexandria had engaged the water shadow in my place.

Crusader's ghosts appeared around me, slashing at him. They didn't seem to be doing any appreciable kind of damage to him though. I would have gone for his eyes myself, but Tattletale had watched the footage of previous fights with me, and she'd told me she didn't think he saw with his eyes at all. She suspected that he saw using water. If that was true obscuring his vision wouldn't do anything.

Flyers were in the air now. My hands turned into massive blades, sparking against his thick hide even as he grabbed at me. I dodged, but he was slightly faster than I was, even with the enhancement of the fear I felt from the nearest Endbringer shelter.

His grip was like a vice, stronger even than Sylar's telekinesis. It grabbed my arm, and put another clawed hand around my throat trying to choke me even as it tried to pull my arm off. I couldn't breathe, and for a moment I felt the world darkening around me.

I exploded outwards, growing thirty feet in the space of an instant, and as I did I grew a hundred times more durable. The force of his grip was still intense; I doubted that Menja could have survived on her own, but that wasn't the only power at my disposal. I had my biokinetic aura, Lung's natural durability and the metal under my skin, even if it was rapidly being crushed.

I could feel my trachea changing, though, becoming stronger. My skin was changing as well, allowing me to extract oxygen from it without even needing the use of my throat.

" _YOUR REIGN IS OVER, MONSTER_!" I hissed. I shoved my bladed hand in his face and I turned up my flame as hot as it would go.

I could hear shouts of dismay from the people behind me. They were only now starting to get organized. The heat I was producing was as hot as the sun, but all it did was make Leviathan's skin glow a little, much as it did when it was struck by Legend's beams.

Unfortunately all the heat was apparently bothering the people behind me, heat washing over them and making them withdraw.

Water was boiling all around my feet and ankles, hot steam rising around us as it and I were suddenly grappling. We must have looked like giants. It was still stronger than I, but whenever it seemed to be getting the advantage the Siberian slashed at him from behind.

Alexandria was protecting the people behind me from his water shadow, fighting despite the fact that her punches should have slipped through the water much like water.

At least twenty Capes began shooting, beams flashing over Leviathan's skin and sometimes hitting me. I felt a pleasure as my body began to change, adapting both to the energy beams and to the sheer pressure of Leviathan's strength.

I was getting stronger, and I wasn't certain whether it was Crawler's powers, or Lung's. Unfortunately the stronger I got the stronger Leviathan seemed to be getting. Had he been toying with me in the beginning?

With any luck I'd make him regret that. My power was only going to continue to grow, and while he was stalling in order to collapse the city, I felt certain that my power would be enough to be a real danger to him.

The Siberian was the only one of us doing any real damage to him. Her claws actually dug into his flesh whereas even Legend's power seemed to have little effect. My bladed hands didn't make a difference. Nothing I was doing seemed to except that I was buying time for the others.

Unfortunately in a protracted battle he'd win. We needed to do real damage or everything we did here was useless.

Miss Militia was firing warheads at both of us. She seemed to be trying to get Leviathan, but she didn't seem to worry too much if she hit me. Some of the hits hurt, but each time she blasted me they hurt a little less. I was adapting, and it wouldn't be long before they didn't affect me at all.

A girl with a crossbow fired at Leviathan, and her bolts actually sank deeply into him. Leviathan swung me off my feet before I could use my telekinisis to hold myself in place, and I felt a bolt plunge through me like I was made of butter. All my power came to nothing. The bolt flew through me and plunged deeply into Leviathan.

The rumble of an incredible mass of rushing water came through my feet. Normally this far into a fight Leviathan would have killed at least twenty Capes, but he actually hadn't killed a single cape yet.

That wouldn't stand; I could see the Tidal wave coming.

I concentrated and a wall of iron appeared behind me. It was thicker than what I'd managed at the PRT headquarters; I wasn't having to protect an entire building.

Despite that I knew it wouldn't be enough. I felt a moment of regret for the loss of New Wave. They'd had several members with force shields who could protect the others. Now I wasn't sure what they were going to do; I didn't know the powers of all the out of town Capes behind me.

The water hit me like a pile driver. Even though my eight now had to be similar to that of Leviathan, I was ripped out of his grasp and it took me a moment in the water to regain my footing. He sprang away from me. It was as though the water didn't even exist for him, which I suppose it didn't if he was its master.

Rune's power restored me and I levitated, launching myself toward Leviathan even as the water retreated from around me. I didn't bother to listen to the casualties, whatever they might be. All I could feel was a growing sense of hate.

This was the monster who had terrified generations, who had ruined a world that once had been relatively safe. I'd seen that look of terror on my Mom's face, on Dad's, on classmates.

Leviathan and his siblings had stolen hope from humanity. Once the stars had seemed almost obtainable, but they'd forced us back to earth, bringing civilization to the edge of collapse.

From the pictures I'd seen it was only a matter of time unless something was done. Humanity was on its way to extinction, and the Endbringers were Scion's handmaidens.

It sprang to the top of a building, staring at me intently, crouching.

I was taller now than I had been when we'd started, now a little taller than Leviathan himself. I felt my throat snap back into place.

Leviathan moved suddenly, trying to dodge around me to get at the vulnerable people behind me. I could tell it was getting frustrated by the lack of a body count. I'd been able to keep it from advancing, but I wasn't winning either.

I was stronger now than I'd ever been, but it wasn't enough. The stronger I got the stronger it got. Unless it had a power like Lung's that meant one thing; it had been toying with Cape's all these years. It was far stronger than anyone had ever guessed, and the only reason I could think for it to pretend weakness was to encourage Capes to fight and die.

If it had revealed its true power humanity would have simply abandoned any of their coastal cities that were targeted rather than throw Capes into an endless meat grinder. Instead it pretended to be weaker than it was so that people would have hope. People who had hope would continue to fight, and the more that fought the more that died.

Were the Endbringers keeping the Triumvirate alive because of that? Without them human hope would be a thing of the past, but seeing them fight year after year without dying probably inspired Capes by the hundreds to risk their own lives.

One in four dead was a good day according to Legend. Were they purposefully culling us? If so, why? Were parahumans that much of a threat to their ultimate plans or were they simply all sadists?

I lunged for Leviathan, but it twisted, moving beyond even my inconsiderable speed. It was moving like a football player avoiding a tackle with the skill of a graceful ballerina. I could only envy that kind of speed even though I was probably the only one who was able to appreciate it, other than Velocity.

The Siberian blinked, appearing directly in front of Leviathan. This slowed it down long enough for me to get hold of it's tail. It tried to fling me off, but I was bigger than it was now, and even though it tried to throw me into the mass of terrified defenders I was able to hold me ground. I sent blades slicing down from the back of the my heels into the ground, sinking four feet or even longer into the concrete below me. This anchored me into the ground and kept Leviathan from dragging me.

The Siberian clawed into its front, leaving deep gashes. The people in the crowd were blasting Leviathan with everything they had, but nothing they did seemed to make a difference at all. Even Eidolon seemed to be using something like a copy of Legend's powers. I saw him glance at me with something like a look of envy and I had to wonder why.

I could only steal powers but he had every power. He could become any Tinker, any Master. With a power like his I had no doubt that I could change the world forever. I was doing my best to do that with my own power.

My blades hadn't even been able to penetrate Leviathan's hide at all before. Now, enhanced by Lung's power of Escalation they were finally making small gashes. I would eventually be able to make gashes like the Siberian did, deep and possibly meaningful.

However, my stolen combat skills were telling me something disturbing. Nothing any of us were doing seemed to be causing the creature any kind of pain. It was almost as though it didn't have vital organs. If I'd taken the kind of pummeling it was taking I'd have been bleeding everywhere even as my wounds struggled to heal.

It almost didn't seem to care as it clawed at the Siberian. In a way it reminded me of combat with the Siberian herself. Was Leviathan just a projection? If so, was there someone projecting her? I couldn't sense anyone nearby, but someone able to create an Endbringer had to be magnitudes more powerful than a member of the Nine.

I was missing something.

Even though I was digging blades into its tail I was losing my grip. Every time I got stronger Leviathan matched me strength for strength. Was it toying with me as much as it was toying with everyone else?

Leviathan slipped free of my grasp, but the Siberian lunged forward and grabbed its legs.

I'd been reserving my bombs for later in the fight, fearing that there would come a point where it became necessary to slow Leviathan down. It was able to adapt with frightening speed. It had stopped bothering with the Siberian, probably because it had figured out that she was a projection, and it was turning around to lunge at me.

I had to slow it down; the speed it was using now would make it hard for me to use a grip on it. Krieg's power blossomed within me, allowing me to see the lines of force that surrounded everything. I was able to sap kinetic energy from Leviathan, but it's power was strong enough that while I would have slowed anyone else down to a crawl it only slowed Leviathan down a fraction.

That fraction was enough to even the odds. I struck out at its face with all the force I could muster. The hit created a sound like the crack of thunder, and I could hear people behind me crying out.

It was as though I hadn't even hit it. I was thirty five feet tall now and my strongest punch had barely phased him.

He lunged forward, and this time he wasn't sandbagging as much. He wasn't just a little stronger than I was; he was much stronger. He used his powerful arms to brush mine aside with a force I was unaccustomed to. I hadn't dealt with someone this much stronger than I was in a long time, if ever.

It suddenly occurred to me that the reason I was assuming it was a projection was that I could not feel its power under its skin the way I could most parahumans. Unlike the Siberian, with whom I'd felt nothing though with Leviathan I could feel the faintest hint of something, even though it felt like it was miles away.

I would need to reach down inside it to get to that point; whatever its skin was was blocking my power.

Losing focus on the battle before me wasn't my smartest idea. Leviathan lunged past my defenses and began to claw away at my throat.

Behind me people were screaming.


	58. Core

_Sham down, Frentic down, Good Neighbor down, Impel Down, Harsh Mistress down._

I could hear Dragon's voice echoing through the communicators of the others; mine had somehow been torn off in the middle of the fighting.

Shadowing out of Leviathan's grasp, I managed to flip around telekinetically, grabbing onto its throat as I returned to solidity. I pushed my feet against its spine even as tried to twist it's head off. Maybe that would do something; nothing else I was doing seemed to.

Now that I'd changed directions I saw that Leviathan had given up on the single water clone that it had been fighting Alexandria with. Instead it was creating dozens of smaller water clones, most of them human sized. Despite that they hit with the force of concrete, enough to break bones and remove limbs.

People were shimmering into null time one after the other as the clones took them out of the battle. There were more than a hundred clones, each of whom were attacking a separate hero.

Leviathan had never demonstrated this kind of control before. It had always been a single water clone and massive tsunamis. No one had ever seen this level of finesse, this level of multitasking. It had always been assumed that he lacked fine control with his hydrokinesis. The most he had ever done before on a small level was to create shield like geysers or small waves. He'd never done anything like this before.

Everything we knew about him was wrong.

Was I forcing him to up his game in a way that Alexandria had not?

 _Mister Eminent down, Oaf down, Scalder down, Uglymug Down._

People were being trapped, but there had been no deaths, not yet. I felt Leviathan stiffen beneath me.

I saw a water clone lash out at an armband, tearing it off an arm. Damn.

He was adapting too fast, and I wasn't able to hold him back, not like this. People were going to start dying and it was going to be my fault. I should have created a more subtle device.

I flipped over, dropping to the ground in front of Leviathan.

Crouching, I touched the water that had reached everyone's ankles and I gathered my will.

A moment later Leviathan and his clones vanished. Looking behind me I saw over a hundred of the heroes had come with me. Only the people who had been in the air hadn't been transported to the mirror universe.

None of these people were making a difference, and I wasn't going to let them throw their lives away for no reason.

I saw Armsmaster staring at me, a look of betrayal on his face, but I wasn't going to budge. He had been kind to me and he deserved to live as much as anyone.

Before I could stay anything, he stabbed me with his Halberd. I felt a sharp pain as his blade sliced through my armor like it was butter. It was a hideous betrayal, and I felt myself tempted to kill him.

The blades on my fingers warped and changed, narrowing to a molecular thickness. It was brilliant. How he'd known that much about Crawler's powers astonished me.

A moment later I was back.

Alexandria and Legend were trying to fight Leviathan, but tactics that had been successful in the past barely seemed to work now.

There were a half dozen fliers.

The Siberian had disappeared the moment I was in the other universe, but now she was back. Krieg's power kicked in, and suddenly Leviathan was a little slower, slow enough for me to score a good hit. My claws dug in, much further than they had before, although not nearly as far as the Siberian's.

It didn't matter. I saw Alexandria gesture for the fliers to back away.

Now that I didn't have to protect anyone I could go all out. I was still growing, and as we fought the earth shook beneath us. I could feel the fear of the people in the shelters, fear that sustained me, and added to the powers that I was already growing.

I hacked away at Leviathan's leg even as the Siberian hacked away at its back. We were using the same tactics a wolf pack used. Hit it from one direction and while it tried to defend itself from that direction attack it from the other.

Suddenly water surrounded my face and I couldn't breathe. I inhaled water and I started hacking, trying to expel it. It was the tactic I'd feared Leviathan would use from the beginning, and it was part of the reason I'd decided to take Crawler's power in the first place.

A moment later I could breathe just fine. Crawler's power had tried to create gills, but I'd vetoed that with Bonesaw's knowledge and my biokinesis. Instead the power was now allowing me to absorb oxygen through my skin.

I blazed hot, and the water around me boiled and burned, evaporating as soon as it hit my skin in a superheated steam.

The bigger I got, the stronger I got. I could feel my face changing, snout extending, scales growing. Hits that would have broken bones before were now bothering me much less. With Fenja's power blows impacted me with a hundredth of the force they otherwise would. Hookwolf and my biokinetic aura gave me durability, and Lung did as well. My durability was growing.

Another wave, bigger than the others began to build around us. The fliers all rose higher in the air even as I saw buildings crushed into timber. I felt an earthquake below us.

The fight was a sham. It was doing its real work beneath us with one aspect of its power even as it had been creating hundreds of clones and tidal waves. How powerful was this monster?

We were suddenly underwater, but now I was strong enough that it didn't make much difference. I could breathe easily.

As the waters receded, I realized that the city couldn't take much more. Leviathan was no longer bothering to hold back. It didn't need to undermine the city, although it probably meant to as a matter of course.

The deeper I cut into Leviathan's flesh, the faster it regenerated. On the surface there wasn't much regeneration at all, but it was noticeably increasing as I dug deeper.

Using Bonesaw's skills my mind raced. Toward the center the regeneration would be incredible, but even worse its flesh seemed to be getting denser the farther toward the center of its body. I was able to do the math and it was horrendous; doubling over and over.

No hero had the power to break through this kind of armor. It had been a sham all along. Even with the new claws I'd sprouted with Armsmaster's help I wasn't certain that I'd be able to reach the core, wherever it was.

Even if I was able to claw my way to the center, there was no way of knowing if I was hitting the right spot; there was a chance that I would be exhausting myself even as the core was in the tip of the tail. Nothing I was doing so far seemed to be doing much difference.

I felt a pain in my back, and the metal at my back exploded. Wings made of silvery metal exploded from my back and I suddenly could fly.

I was almost sixty feet tall by now, my fingers each more than two feet long. The claws on my fingers had grown to be a yard long. Leviathan was still as strong as I was, but it was slippery and as it grew smaller in comparison to me I was going to have a harder time keeping hold of it.

It lashed out and I felt the flesh on my stomach part, but my healing was now almost as fast as its healing. Lung's healing alone had been strong, especially when escalated this far, but adding Crawler's ability to it enhanced by fear?

I was going to have to hurry or soon it would be so small that I wouldn't be able to even get to its center, wherever it was. If I let go of Fenja's power Leviathan would shred me; my other powers still weren't strong enough defensively to compensate.

When Lung had fought Leviathan before there was no doubt in my mind that Leviathan had been holding back. Given his power he could have shred Leviathan without a thought, even as a winged dragon.

Water hit me with a force like concrete, but I ignored it. My body was adapting, growing stronger every moment, Crawler's adaptation increased by the power of Fear and by Lung's escalation.

Where was the core?

I felt a moment of deep regret. I should have been stealing powers from Thinkers, as many of them as I could find. Focusing on Brutes and Strikers hadn't been the best of strategies.

The fliers were hovering high above, but I had the hearing of Cricket and Lung enhanced by the winds. I heard a voice coming over the communicator on Alexandria's arm.

A chill went over my spine.

"It's in the center of the chest," Sylar's voice came over the loudspeaker.

I doubted that any of the heroes in the air had heard Sylar's voice before, but it was impossible. No one had regeneration strong enough to deal with a brain injury that severe.

"Someone let me out," he said. "But this is what I have to do to repay that. My power lets me understand things, and that thing is a puppet. Any damage you do to it is an illusion. Only the core is real, and it's in the center of the chest."

I felt rage in in my chest. He'd killed Crystal, killed Glory Girl and Panacea's entire family. He'd killed at least twenty other people in whatever world he'd come from, and someone had intentionally let him free?

"Ask yourself who is the bigger threat. I no longer have to kill, but the thing you are fighting is made for nothing else. Even when I was at my worst I killed only individuals. This thing kills cities. If you don't end it, human civilization will be ended."

Sylar's voice was coming only through Alexandria's communicator. What worried me was that she didn't look particularly surprised or confused.

Dragon would have never allowed someone unauthorized access to the network. That meant that whoever had released Sylar had the power to override her influence. Only someone with official governmental powers could have done it.

Still, I'd killed him once and I could o it again. I'd deal with whoever had released him later.

Next time I'd make sure that there was nothing left of him to heal.

Leviathan began struggling in my arms; apparently whatever it used in place of hearing had let it know that I knew.

It clawed at my thighs, but I pulled several bombs from my dimensional pocket and as I sprang away from it I threw them.

Circus's power included the ability to throw things with supernatural accuracy, so Leviathan suddenly found itself with arms and legs encased in null time fields.

The Siberian was suddenly in front of it, clawing away at the center of its chest.

I clawed away as well, nanothorn claws doing my best to cut away at the flesh inside its chest. Ordinarily two of us clawing at the same spot would have gotten in each others way, but the Siberian was as much a part of me as my own hand. We worked grimly, digging away at the monster that had made human life such a horror.

Leviathan pulled, and it's leg came off. It shouldn't have been possible, but a moment later its other leg came free.

It really was a puppet; I doubt it actually felt any pain at all, for all that it had pretended during previous Endbringer battles.

I kept digging. The Siberian was actually more effective that I was, even with nanothorn blades on my fingers. It was getting exponentially harder, even though I was continuing to grow larger. I was now seventy feet tall, the size of a building.

Buildings crumbled to each side of me as I brushed my wings against them. I was stronger than Alexandria now, force multiplied by force, Lung's escalation enhanced by fear enhanced by Fenja's size.

Despite that Leviathan's interior was getting tougher faster than I was getting stronger. It was like moving through heavy mud now, and I could feel one of my fingernails snapping off, only to grow back almost immediately. The Siberian continued to cut through it doggedly though.

In defiance of physics Leviathan managed to snap both of its arms off at once.

Water surrounded us suddenly, and when it retreated Leviathan had formed limbs of water. It sprang away from me, and I knew that if I let up on it for even an instant its regeneration would reverse everything I'd managed to accomplish.

There was only one thing I could do.

Krieg's power reached out, absorbing kinetic energy. Before it had only been enough to slow Leviathan slightly, but now between the power of escalation and fear it was immensely more powerful.

It must have felt like moving through mud to Leviathan. He slowed enough that I had no problem getting behind him.

If my claws weren't strong enough to reach his core, then I had to do something else.

I got behind him and I grabbed him, holding him still. Water sprayed me in the face, obscuring my vision, but a moment later special lenses formed over my eyes, and I no longer had trouble seeing in spite of it.

The Siberian dug in, tearing and clawing.

Leviathan's body grew denser the farther in something went, growing exponentially tougher. Physics would imply that meant that nothing but something that had force enough to destroy the entire planet could reach the center.

Fortunately the Siberian ignored physics.

Despite that it did slow as it got closer and closer to the center. Water surged around me over and over, tidal wave following tidal wave.

My hearing now was enhanced beyond anything I'd ever experienced. I could now hear everything for dozens of miles away. I could hear the sounds of rusting from the Endbringer shelters, the sounds of children crying and their parents tying to shush them. I could hear the racing heartbeats of people who weren't sure they were going to see the next day.

I could hear the sound of rushing water.

It was coming. A tidal wave that was beyond anything Earth had ever seen. The largest natural tidal wave in human history had been more than seventeen hundred feet tall. This was something that dwarfed that, a wall of water that wouldn't just destroy just Brockton Bay, but would destroy Boston and much of the eastern Seaboard.

Leviathan twisted its head around and stared at me with a challenging look. The implication was obvious. Let it go or it would kill millions of people. I'd be responsible for more deaths than anyone in recent human history.

It was a fool's choice. I'd seen the future, and Leviathan was one of the Horsemen of the apocalypse. The end of the world would be brought in by it and its siblings. This was my last, best chance to end it. If I let it go there was no guarantee that I'd ever get a chance to fight it again.

A Leviathan unchained by the need to toy with humanity would simply batter the coasts, destroying city after city from the safety of the ocean. We'd never even have a chance to fight as it wiped out much of humanity.

Considering that almost forty percent of Americans lived by the coasts and many other countries had similar numbers it might kill hundreds of millions.

Could I risk the deaths of everyone I ever knew, every kid at school, all of my neighbors? The Endbringer shelters weren't designed to take this kind of power; water would fill them and all the people inside would drown in the dark.

For a moment I wavered.

My grip loosened a little. Even though Leviathan didn't have a mouth it almost looked like it was smirking at me.

Rage filled me. It thought humanity was its plaything. I would teach it different.

Tightening my grip I sent the Siberian digging with renewed vigor. I had to reach the core before the water reached us. I could see it now on the horizon, a wall of water three quarters of a mile high. Once it hit there would be nothing less of Brockton Bay. I wasn't even sure that some of the fliers could fly that high.

A moment later the Siberian froze as it struck something. I felt my link to it shatter, and the shock of it was enough that my hold on the mirror universe collapse.

Suddenly there were a hundred and fifty people around me staring up at a wall of water that was surging toward us like the end of the world.

Hugging Leviathan to me, I reached inside its chest. It was painful; I felt as though the skin on my hand was being flayed off.

It struggled, but I was stronger than it was now, and there was nothing it could do.

There.

I found the core and I began to drain it. It wasn't like any power that I'd ever felt before. All of the Capes I'd collected before had been like raindrops while this was a raging ocean of power. It was overwhelming, a flood of so much power that I felt like I was drowning.

Everyone was frozen, staring at me, now ninety foot tall, dwarfing Leviathan. The people around me looked as though they were four inches tall but I could see their expressions.

I could feel the water within them to.

Suddenly I could feel everything. Water was everywhere in all living things, in the air, in the sea.

I felt Leviathan crumbling into dust.

The wall of water was almost upon us. I turned and gestured, and even with Leviathan's immense power it was all I could do to stop it.

The water froze where it was, a wall of water like no one had ever seen. A moment later it began to retreat.

I froze as I felt a sudden pain in the center of my chest. My body began to crumble around me as I lost contact with my own flesh.

Something was forming inside me, a core that was the essence of the real me. It was painful but pleasurable at the same time.

As my body fell all around me, chunks of discarded meat that were no longer necessary, I began to create my new body.

Time seemed to lose all meaning, but as I opened my new eyes for the first time people were still standing where they had been when I had last seen them.

I was standing nude before them, not as Vengeance but as Taylor Hebert. I had a vague sense that this would have bothered me once, but I couldn't remember why.

Eidolon was flying nearby, mouth open.

I could feel his power pulling at me. I had a purpose in life now; I was to promote conflict, to provide a good fight. I was death incarnate and I would fulfill that purpose.


	59. Bear

"What happened?" Dennis asked.

One moment he'd been attacked by a water clone that was his size. It had been taking everything he had simply to throw up time locked pieces of paper in front of himself to use as shields and he'd seen people around him being thrown into a stasis that was like what he could do with his own power yet somehow different.

The next moment they were gone. Leviathan and the water had completely vanished.

Only Vengeance remained, as large as any Endbringer and staring them with an inscrutable gaze. Suddenly Armsmaster was there stabbing at him and Dennis had to wonder if Vengeance had turned on them. The monster stiffened and for a moment it looked as though it was going to attack, but then it turned its head and vanished as though it had never been.

"What's going on?" Vistas asked from behind him. "Where did Leviathan go?"

Leviathan. Dennis had been trying to avoid thinking about him. The monster was far more terrifying than he'd ever imagined it would be. It was incredibly fast, enough so that he had trouble even following its movements. Vengeance was just as fast though.

If he had to face either of them he'd never be able to throw a shield in time.

"Vengeance has placed us out of harms way in another dimension," Armsmaster called out. "Dragon will not be able to communicate with us from here, so we need to stay together."

"He just took us out of the battle without even asking?" a hero asked incredulously.

"Presumably he chose to preserve our lives rather than waste them uselessly," Armsmaster said. "Apparently Leviathan was stronger than we ever imagined."

Dennis stared wordlessly at Vista. If he'd known Leviathan would be this powerful he'd have never chosen to fight; he was useless against someone too fast to ever be touched. He might have worked support, freezing people until they could be brought to a healer, but Gamble's armband improvements had made even that obsolete.

"We need to stay together," Armsmaster called out. "Getting lost here is probably not a good idea."

"This wasn't what I signed up for," one of the Capes that Dennis didn't recognize said.

"As far as I understand this pocket universe is created rather than preexisting; that's why it looks exactly the same as our own moments ago," Armsmaster said. "Either Vengeance will let us go when it is all over, or she will fall, in which case the universe will collapse around us and we'll need to be ready."

"Anyone who needs healing over here," Panacea called out. Her sister was standing protectively over her.

Neither one of them should have been here, but Dennis found himself glad that they were.

Five minutes passed, with Panacea healing as many people as she could while everyone else spoke in low, somber tones. Those who had been through fights against Leviathan seemed the most agitated. Apparently he had never been like this before, never shown such power.

Dennis was just getting ready to go talk to Glory Girl when it happened.

The world shattered around them. It was painful, and he felt as though his skin was being pulled off even though nothing seemed wrong with it.

Suddenly it was raining and they were standing in the water again.

Dennis heard screams and he looked up and froze. A giant Vengeance the size of a building was struggling with Leviathan.

More screams made him turn, and he felt his legs weaken. The wall of water coming toward them looked like the end of the world. Someone called out to Strider, but apparently he was one of those who'd been placed in stasis because of their wounds earlier.

They were all dead. At the rate the wave was coming, Dennis wasn't even sure that Velocity could escape in time. He'd thought they'd have the first Endbringer attack in history to be casualty free. Instead they'd be another footnote in history.

A gasp, and he turned.

Leviathan's body was falling apart, crumbling as though it was made of clay. Vengeance was standing hunched over, and the Siberian was nowhere to be seen.

A moment later Vengeance looked up. His eyes were now glowing the same color of green Leviathan's had. He lifted one hand and there was a distant rumbling that Dennis felt through his feet deep into his bones.

Glancing back at the coast he saw the waters simply freeze in place before moving backward.

Then Vengeance's body began to crumble much as Leviathan's had, except this time the parts left over were steaming piles of meat.

There was a blinding light, and then there was a girl.

Taylor Hebert.

Dennis blinked. He'd been told that she was the most likely suspect to be Vengeance, but he'd never fully believed it. Now seeing her naked, he wasn't sure what he was seeing.

She opened her eyes, which were Leviathan's color of green and a moment later she was among them.

Although she was no larger than a tall girl she hit like Leviathan, breaking bones and limbs wherever she went. People were being surrounded by the colors of stasis faster than they could even defend themselves.

In the space of a moment thirty heroes were down. It was absolutely terrifying. She was moving so fast that she was just a blur, faster than Velocity had ever moved. Dennis couldn't even move his head fast enough to see what was happening. Everyone else was just realizing what was happening when Alexandria hit Hebert in the side.

Instead of going flying as she should have she simply stopped, rocked back by the blow but barely phased. She backhanded Alexandria who went flying over the horizon. As she stepped away, Dennis could see that holes had been left in the pavement where long metal spikes had been driven into the ground to anchor her.

Legend blasted her, but while the beams blistered her skin and it burned off it healed back almost as quickly as it was struck, much more quickly than Leviathan's flash had ever healed.

Eidolon had simply frozen, staring at her. He was no longer the most powerful Cape on the planet, something that was now apparent to anyone. Taylor Hebert was indisputably that, and if her secret identity was gone, it was unlikely that anyone would be stupid enough to try to use it against someone with the power of an Endbringer.

A voice came blasting from Dennis's armband, one he didn't recognize.

"Taylor, it's me, Dad," the voice said. "There's a woman with me who says I need to talk to you. She says she can't read you anymore, but that she can read me and this is the best outcome for all of us."

The monster that had been Taylor Hebert froze at the sound of her father's voice.

"You are still you," her father said. "You don't have to do this. You aren't an unthinking monster."

The heroes all around Dennis froze, watching her cautiously. One hero lifted an arm as though to blast her from behind but someone else grabbed his arm to stop him.

"You wanted to be a hero," her Dad said. "To save the world. You wanted to make people happy and unafraid. The thing is, you never needed to be a hero for me. You were always the light of my world."

She'd stopped moving, which was something Dennis was deeply grateful for. Every moment her father continued speaking was a moment longer he had to live.

He gestured slowly to Vista; with her powers it was possible that they'd be able to transport a number of people far away, although given her speed it was possible that there was no distance they could go where she couldn't follow.

Taylor's head snapped in his direction, moving so quickly it almost looked as though it had teleported. Dennis seriously considered freezing himself, but that would have been cowardly. There was still Vista to consider.

Instead he froze and carefully looked down. Dogs considered looking into their eyes a challenge, and while Taylor wasn't a dog, staring at her nakedness probably wouldn't win her any favors.

He wondered why he wasn't more phased by her nakedness. Maybe it was because she showed no shame or maybe it was because she didn't really seem human anymore. She was more like one of those Greek statues, except...flesh colored.

"You aren't here for this," her father was continuing. "You are here to save everyone. Don't hurt people who are just here to help everyone."

Alexandria returned, but she didn't attack.

Taylor simply stood, staring at everyone as though she didn't recognize anyone. A moment later there was a shudder that seemed to wrack her whole body.

"What?" she asked, her voice sounding like it was a little hoarse from disuse.

"Taylor, I love you," her Dad was still saying.

Dennis wondered if he could even hear what was going on here, or if he was just broadcasting, hoping to change things.

She looked around at the fifty people caught in stasis.

"Did we win?" she asked.

The people around Dennis stared at her for a moment before everyone started relaxing.

A moment later she looked down at herself and shrieked. Apparently she was only now realizing that she was nude.

She blinked out of existence, presumably back to that mirror universe to change clothes.

"Did we lose anybody?" Dennis asked, turning to Vista.

"I don't think so," Vista said.

If it was true it would be humanities first encounter with the Endbringers that didn't result in a single human casualty.

* * *

"How are we going to deal with her?" Tagg asked.

Dennis was sitting in a conference room in a hotel; the Rig and PRT headquarters had both largely been destroyed by the various tsunamis and would need extensive reconstruction. They were temporarily headquartered in a hotel that was farthest landward and hadn't sustained much damage on the upper floors at least.

"There's not much we can do," Tattletale said. "She is now _more_ powerful than Leviathan, with powers that synergize with his. Trying to threaten her father will result in immediate retaliation, and frankly she can do more damage to us than we can do to her."

"She's an opportunity," Armsmaster said. "Leviathan is the weakest of the Endbringers, but she could be invaluable in fighting the others."

"Not the Simurgh," Tagg said. He shuddered. "If she should get a grip on Hebert it'll be the end of everything."

Everyone nodded, looking a little ill. Ordinary Simurgh victims were bad enough; there was a reason that they were normally quarantined. They caused spreading ripples of insanity wherever they went, acting as ticking time bombs and affecting others in horrible ways.

Taylor Hebert would be a literal nuclear bomb, not just because of Leviathan's power.

"I'm a little concerned about the reaction of the other Endbringers," Dragon said. "Satellite imagery shows the Simurgh's flight path to have become erratic and agitated. It is possible that we will receive some sort of retaliation for killing one of their own."

"Maybe we should be getting behind her instead of thinking how to manage her like a threat," Miss Militia said. "Every indication is that Taylor wants to be a hero.

"She badly injured thirty heroes," Tagg said. "In less time than it would take me to walk across this room."

"If she'd wanted them dead she could have torn off their armbands," Miss Militia said. "The Armbands that she herself created."

"This is the first time that we've ever actually won against an Endbringer," Armsmaster said.

"What happens when she drains Behemoth?" Tagg demanded. "Who will be able to stop her then?"

"Maybe we should just give her what she wants," Dennis said, surprising everyone.

"And what does she want?" Tagg asked.

"To be a hero," Armsmaster said. "Which means that we spin it to the public that way. As long as she thinks everyone idolizes her, she's likely to behave in the way everyone expects."

A hero with the power of an Endbringer would be an incredible thing.

"Do you think she'll be upset about the Internet?" Vista asked in a small voice.

"What?" Tagg asked.

"Someone managed to film the entire fight and put it on the internet, including the part where she is naked."

"She's a minor!" Tagg said. "Putting that online is a felony. Do we have any idea who did it?"

"They blurred her bits," Dennis said. "Probably for that reason. Other than embarrassing her, the main thing is that it means her identity is revealed to the entire world."

"Put as many resources to finding out who did it as you safely can without hurting other operations," Tagg said. He hesitated, looking around the hotel suite they were working out of. "On second thought, it might be better to delegate the computer portion of that to Boston. I'll make the arrangements myself."

"Do you think anybody would be insane enough to use it against her?" Tagg asked.

"We aren't sure how the Fallen will react," Armsmaster admitted. "They worship the Endbringers, and they may take her killing one as an affront. Or they may take her as a new incarnation of the Endbringer and start worshiping her."

"Her father would seem to be the best leverage we have against her," Tagg said. At everyone's sudden unfriendly look he held up his hand. "He was able to talk her back from the brink of whatever mental instability she was suffering. I'm not suggesting pressuring him, simply using him to convince her to take the humane courses of action."

"We'll have to protect him," Armsmaster said. "I suspect that she wouldn't react well if the Fallen capture him or worse kill him."

Tagg nodded soberly. "I've already assigned PRT members in Hawaii to protect him covertly."

"I'm not sure there's any way of predicting what she'll do," Tattletale said. "Even with my abilities it's going to be difficult. Apparently there's some kind of mental effect whenever she takes certain powers. That makes creating a behavioral model much more difficult than you'd think. Worse, she now has the same immunity to being precogged that the rest of he Endbringers do."

"Even if our issues with her are resolved, that doesn't help us with our other issue," Tagg said. "Which is how to help the city recover when we don't even have a headquarters to work from."

"There's no way to take a census, not with the disruptions in power and food and security," Armsmaster says. "But Dragon has drones in the sky and if traffic is any indication we are currently down to a quarter of our previous population."

"That's ninety thousand people, assuming it's accurate," Velocity said. "But it might not be. A lot of people had cars that were destroyed or washed out to sea and foot traffic isn't up to normal standards because where are people going to go? No businesses are open, so most people are likely going to stay at home."

"So we might be looking at as many as a hundred and fifty thousand people," Tagg said. "Governments have abandoned Endbringer attacked cities before, and not just the ones attacked by the Simurgh."

"At least we won't have to put up a memorial," Assault said. "There were a few people lost that didn't get to an Endbringer shelter in time, including some people in a nursing home, but overall only a few dozen people died from the attack. We lost more people in the evacuations beforehand."

Battery was standing, staring out the window.

"I don't think Herbert is going to allow that," she said.

"What?" Tagg asked.

She gestured.

The hotel was high at the top of a hill overlooking the city; it was one of the structures that had been least damaged because of its height, which was why it had been chosen.

A tower was rising in the ruins of the Docks area. It looked similar to the one that had been placed in front of the hospital, although this one lacked the beauty or artistic appeal.

"She's using the sand from the bottom of the Bay," Armsmaster murmured. "I suspect that if we can get crews with electrical skills out, at least some of our power issues will be resolved at least during the day."

"Central power won't make any difference if all the transmission lines are gone," Kid Win disagreed. "And even if we get power back, will it matter if people's houses are destroyed?"

"Three quarters of the houses in the city remain standing," Miss Militia said. "In various states of disrepair. We have to do something to restore the city, or she will."

"She won't even have to be trying to take it over," Tagg said. "People flock to those who are able to provide food or the illusion of security."

"Who says it has to be an illusion?" Dennis asked. He couldn't take his eyes off the structure outside.

"She can't be everywhere. It will take boots on the ground to keep people from taking food from each other. There are former gang members out there who won't think anything of hoarding or even hitting supply trucks so that they can monopolize the distribution of food."

"They don't have any Capes," Tagg said. "Which means we can take them assuming we get enough resources. The fact that our new Endbringer ally seems to think this is important should play well in Washington."

"Where do you let an eight hundred bear sit?" Dennis asked softly.

"Wherever she wants," Vista said beside him.


	60. Call

I could feel them whispering in the back of my mind.

It wasn't just her, although she was chief among them. It was all of them, the sleepers especially. There had been a time when I would have been horrified to learn that instead of two more Endbringers that there were almost twenty.

The fact that we were all commanded to provide conflict for Eidolon of all people boggled my mind. I could resist his influence, if just barely by keeping myself occupied. Moving to the mirror universe provided sweet relief from all of it, but I couldn't stay there forever.

The fact that I no longer needed to sleep at all meant that time in the mirror universe was going to drive me mad with boredom. It wasn't as though I could afford to sit back with a book either.

The Simurgh was whispering threats in my mind. Apparently she resented me killing her brother. I didn't think that she was able to drive me mad from this distance, although it wasn't something that I planned to share with anyone else; while I no longer had to worry about physical attacks from the rest of the world I suspected that I could still be Mastered.

The Protectorate wouldn't balk at keeping me as a Mastered slave. Even if they somehow didn't succeed at it because of an aspect of Endbringer physiology I hadn't discovered yet the fight itself would wipe out more of the people I was going to need to defeat Scion.

Ultimately I needed a plan, and the unfortunate part was that I knew in the back of my mind what I needed to do. Leviathan was powerful on a human scale, but compared to Behemoth and the others he was a small fry.

I needed the power of the other Endbringers, maybe all of them if I was to even attempt to attack Scion. Worse, Leviathan's power had affected me mentally in ways I wasn't entirely sure of yet. That would only grown cumulatively as I stole more and more powers.

The other option would be to take Eidolon's power; he'd somehow Mastered the Endbringers which meant that he had the power to do it again, this time for the forces of good. He'd disappeared shortly after the battle, though, possibly even before I'd regained control of myself. Someone had been helping him, and I wasn't sure why.

Either they knew what he was doing and condoned it, or they didn't and were ending the world through sheer incompetence. Either way I needed to find him and end things before the new Endbringers started to wake up.

Gaining his power might let me control the others, although I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure Eidolon even knew what he was doing.

I needed a Master power, maybe more than one and I needed to get my city ready for whatever might come. It was possible that the Simurgh might come for Brockton Bay because of me, and I didn't like my chances against her.

I was faster than she was on land, but she could fly faster than any of my power sets could. Furthermore, her precognition was perfect. If Leviathan was any indication all the Endbringers were pretending to be weaker than they were, which meant that she probably didn't have to let herself be hit by anyone if she didn't want to.

More importantly was her ability to twist minds. I wasn't sure I had any natural defenses against it and without hat I could win against her and become a much worse threat than either Leviathan or the Simurgh alone.

Finishing my third tower at equidistant points around the city, I began working on my next project, Solar Roads. Each road was made from glass and other substances which I was appropriating from local factories, many of which didn't even have personnel there to guard the materials.

While solar roads weren't the best idea to generate power, they'd work great to transmit power, meaning that the distance to any particular power transformer would be close by. I'd already cleaned the streets with a gentle wash of water that hadn't entered any area homes.

No one had yet seen fit to try to talk to me, understandable after what I had done. However, I could hear people all over the city celebrating quietly in their homes, and from the few radios that were working I heard that people were celebrating all over the world.

It was more subdued in Brockton bay because so much of the city had been destroyed and probably because I was here. People were a little afraid of me, and unfortunately I wasn't entirely sure they were wrong.

Getting a cellphone from a PRT agent had been weirdly easy. He'd assured me that it wasn't bugged and I believed it.

As I began floating over the city laying down glittering black topping over the existing pavement, I picked up my phone telekinetically and I dialed a number.

"Hello?" I heard a voice say suspiciously.

"It's time to come back," I said shortly. "We have work to do."

"Boss!" Leet said. "It's the boss!"

I could hear Uber coming through the phone, which had apparently been switched to speaker.

"You're all anybody has been talking about!" Leet said. "You actually crashed the Internet."

"What?" I asked.

"There's video of the fight," Leet said."I wish it was us, but apparently there's these guys working for CNN who figured out how to work drones from an Endbringer shelter. They had to have rigged it up beforehand; those things are practically Faraday cages."

"Did they get the last part?" I asked quietly.

Leet must have heard something in my voice, because he started stammering.

"They blurred out anything you wouldn't see on a bikini," Uber said, taking over. "What with you being underage and all. They might have been worried you'd destroy their network if they went too far."

That was why everyone had been so subdued here. They'd seen me attack the heroes, at least those who had working cell phones. I wasn't sure how good the reception was in most of the city; the PRT phone I was using right now was a satellite phone.

"They'd have been right," I said. I hesitated. "What are most people saying about me?"

"A lot of them are afraid of you," Leet said. "But most people are hopeful. If Leviathan is gone that means that shipping can start back again. That'll do a lot for the world economies; it'll mean jobs for a lot of people."

"I'm going to be working with the PRT now," I said. I paused. "Or more likely they'll be working with me. I want you to come back and I'll make you both legitimate."

"We're wanted for a lot of crimes," Leet said hesitantly. "That Grand theft auto thing alone..."

"That wasn't cool, and we're going to have to have a discussion about respecting women," I said. "But do you really think they won't give you a full pardon if I ask for it."

"No...?" Leet asked.

"They need her, Dude," Uber said. "They let Shadow Stalker in and she wasn't even that valuable. What do you think they'll do with an Endbringer with all kinds of other powers too?"

"Right," Leet said. "We'll be back in three days. There's more work to the ship than we thought and not all of it can be repaired at sea. We'll be out of dry dock tomorrow."

"Make the ship look respectable and get a fake registry. I'm cleaning up the bay and when I'm done there won't be any derelict ships."

"No?" Leet asked. "What will you do with them?"

"Rip out anything that seems useful and then turn them into coral habitats farther out in the ocean."

"Does coral grow that far north?" Leet asked dubiously.

"Not sure, but the fish will probably like it," I said. "We might even start a fishing industry again."

The one benefit of Leviathan's reign was that after decades of people largely avoiding the water, fisheries had largely repopulated. Dolphins, whales and other creatures that were endangered in Earth Aleph had largely returned here.

Hopefully that was one trend I wouldn't reverse.

It wasn't likely to be a problem for a long time. Most nations' fishing fleets had been grounded in the wake of Leviathan. Small time fishing had been resumed, but large scale fishing had never been resumed.

Some of it had been fear that places where large numbers of boats congregated would make better targets for Leviathan. There had never been any evidence of that, but once the idea had spread people weren't willing to let it go.

The cost of fresh fish bore that out.

I suddenly realized that I never had to eat again if I didn't want to, although I could if I made certain adjustments to my physiology. Leviathan hadn't even had a mouth. Food wouldn't really sustain me, but I could certainly taste it if I wanted to. My new form responded to my biokinesis with an ease that my old one never had.

"Thanks, guys," I said quietly. "Thanks for not being weird about the Endbringer thing."

"Just imagine the views we'll get if we interview you," Leet said gleefully. "We'll break the Internet again!"

"I'll think about it," I said. I felt suddenly tired despite my need for sleep. It probably wouldn't hurt to reassure the world that I wasn't about to become an upgraded Endbringer.

"We'll be back as soon as we can," Leet said. He was silent a moment. "We're glad you are OK."

"I'm just starting," I said. "I've got a long way to go before I can hit that beach in a bikini."

"Looking forward to it," Leet said cheerfully. He was silent for a moment, then said, "Uh...the relaxing part, not the bikini part. You know I think of you like the sister I never had, right?"

I chuckled.

"It sounds like the whole world got to see that much," I said. "I'll just have to get used to it."

"We'll be back as soon as we can," Uber cut in. It sounded like Leet was still having an anxiety attack. Was accidentally hitting on an underage Endbringer that frightening?

Apparently so.

"Good luck," Uber continued. A moment later the phone went dead.

I sighed, looking at the phone. I'd been delaying making my next call for a multitude of reasons, and my call to the boys had just added one more.

The thought of calling Dad had the power to make my stomach twist in a knot, which had to be psychosomatic because I knew that I didn't have an actual stomach at the moment.

Knowing that he knew that the world had seem me naked, even if parts had been covered was bad enough. The harder thing was that he'd had to talk me down from destroying all the heroes. I knew he had to be disappointed and worried, and the longer that I waited to call him the worse it would be.

I was ashamed that I hadn't been stronger. There had been moments of confusion, moments where I'd barely remembered who I even was, and it had taken his voice to get through to me.

I hadn't really wanted to kill anyone. If I had I would have ripped their armbands off before turning them into mush. Despite that I'd broken bones and committed grievous injuries to people that would never have healed with panacea being there.

Still, I hadn't been in my right mind, and that frightened me. With the power I had now I could do a lot of damage in a very short amount of time.

Taking a deep breath that I didn't really need I began pressing buttons.

"Dad?" I said as he picked up the phone.

I could hear a muffled sound of shouting in the background.

"Taylor?" he asked. "Oh thank God. The lady who came to see me said you'd be all right, but I wasn't sure."

"What's that noise in the background?" I asked.

"Every reporter on the island is outside my door," he said. "The PRT is here to keep me safe from any crazies, but everybody is desperate to get an interview. I actually got to see the island for a couple of days before I got locked up like this."

"Are the PRT agents holding you hostage?" I asked. My voice had a dangerous edge to it that I didn't consciously intend.

"No," Dad said. "They've been really nice. There's actually a female agent that has been really helpful. Her name is Samantha. I think you'd like her."

Samantha?

I hadn't heard Dad talk about another woman since Mom had died. Was this some kind of a plot by the PRT or had he genuinely gotten lucky and met someone he liked?

I really needed to start collecting Thinker powers. Life was getting a little too confusing and it would be very easy for me to be like a bull in a china closet when a little finesse would get a lot more done.

A power like that of the Simurgh would give me what I needed.

I could feel a distant angry murmur from her as she felt my desire to drain her of everything leaving nothing of her but a husk.

That's what she deserved, the bitch.

"Are you alright?" Dad asked. "I had to talk you down, and you attacked the heroes."

"The power was a little much," I said. "And the Endbringers have all been Mastered."

"What?" he asked, shocked. "By who?"

"Eidolon," I said. "I'm not sure he knows he's been doing it. I think he has a fourth power slot that he's been using all this time that he doesn't even know he has."

"You've got to tell someone," Dad said.

"I was hoping you'd do that for me," I said. "I'm not exactly feeling safe around other Capes yet."

"Are you really OK?" he asked.

"I will be," I said. "The Endbringers Gone Wild video didn't exactly help, though."

"Well, I'm sure it'll make you more popular in school," Dad said. "If you ever go back."

"I've got another forty million from the Slaughterhouse Nine," I said. "And I can make these solar towers that work great. I'm doing them for free in Brockton Bay, but I figure I can get a couple of million apiece for them outside and people will make their money back really quickly. I'm never going to lack for money."

"Education isn't just about money," Dad said. "Don't you want to go to college, meet someone?"

"Who would ever have me without being intimidated?" I asked. "I'm strong enough to beat Alexandria into putty. What normal guy would be able to be around me without wetting his pants."

"A Cape maybe?" Dad asked.

"There's not much difference between me and a normal man and me and a normal Cape. Maybe someone at the Triumvirate level, but Eidolon is old and an ass. Legend is, well, Legend, but the gay thing is a problem."

I could probably grow a penis if I really wanted to, but I didn't really swing that way, and besides, Legend was married.

Had I been into girls I could have gone for Alexandria despite her age. She didn't really look that old after all.

I wasn't going to age either, I realized suddenly. I'd have to make some adjustments to Dad the next time I saw him. I'd seen a few gray hairs the last time I'd seen him. There were things I could do to arrest the aging process, although an accident or disease would get him sooner or later.

Maybe I should reinforce his skeleton and give him some immune boosting implants. I might be able to get a few hundred years out of him with a careful application of the technology.

I could probably do it while he was sleeping and he'd never even know, other than a few aches and pangs that someone of his age might dismiss.

Dad was silent for a long moment before he finally spoke. "I'm proud of you. You did something that nobody has ever been able to do in the history of mankind. You saved thousands of people, and even if the reporters are a little annoying I wouldn't have it any other way."

"I just got lucky in the power I got. Anybody would have done what I did," I said.

"Three out of four parahumans are villains," Dad said. "And even people that get good powers don't always have the temperament to go out and risk their lives for other. Most people would either use a power like yours to make themselves rich, or they'd put it in a box somewhere and pretend they didn't have it."

I...didn't really have a response to that. It was an intrinsically villainous power, one that could be abused more easily than it could be used in a just way. I wasn't entirely sure I'd always done the right thing.

Uncomfortably, I said "It's probably a good idea if you don't come back for a couple of weeks. I went by our house and there's nothing left, just boards and the foundation. I found a few pictures and a few other mementos but that's it."

"I gathered a lot of them up before I left and put them in a safe deposit box in Boston," Dad said.

I stared at the phone incredulously.

"You sending me away like that was a pretty good indication that things were about to get bad," he said. "And as worried as you were in the last few days it had to be city destroying bad."

I tried to think when he would have had the time but I'd been preoccupied.

"Well, that's something at least. The bad side is that I don't think you've got a job any more. The Dockworker's association building was destroyed. They didn't lose anybody, though."

He was silent for a moment. "Maybe there's something I can do by telephone from here."

"I'm not sure anyone will be working for a couple of weeks," I said.

I suspected it was longer, but I didn't want to worry him. If there was a reconstruction the Dockworker's union would be part of it.

"I love you," Dad said.

"I love you too," I said. As I hung up I wondered what sort of city Dad would come back to, if he chose to come back at all. If the Simurgh attacked there wouldn't be anything left.


	61. Grow

Moving the ships out of the Ship Graveyard hadn't been a problem at all, and so I continued to turn main thoroughfares into solar roads. It satisfied Burnscar's need for fire without affecting my mental processes too much, at least as far as I could tell.

Over the next three days no one bothered me. I called Dad again, and his situation with the reporters hadn't changed, but I hadn't been approached by a single one. I supposed I had to be a little intimidating considering the powers I now had and the fact that I was seen on camera demolishing a group of heroes.

Considering that everyone already knew who I was, I wasn't even bothering to hide my identity. I simply wore an outfit of glittering metal and glass as I floated through the town.

As I worked, I idly listened to radios around the city. While televisions weren't working because of the lack of power and destroyed cable lines, radios worked just fine, and most people were listening to Boston radio stations.

Hearing about the trial of Canary irritated me. It sounded as though she was being railroaded into the Birdcage and no one seemed to care.

The fact that I would love to have her power didn't help. It would synergize well with Stormtiger's power, the winds carrying my voice farther than the original singer could ever sing. I needed a power that would let me master others; even if it was only for crowd control if she Simurgh came. People tended to behave foolishly when they faced danger in situations they weren't trained for.

The more I thought about it, the more I wanted her power.

Eventually I decided that I could save a woman's life and get what I wanted all in one event. She had an additional advantage over most masters I might face; she was muzzled. Facing Heartbreaker could easily end up with a result I wasn't interested in, but taking her power would be like taking fish in a barrel.

A quick swim took me to Boston late at night. Changing my features and pulling clothes from my dimensional pocket I found an internet cafe and I spent the night on the Internet. There was an entire country of parahumans who had powers that might be useful to me. Many of them were villains who I didn't have to have qualms about taking.

I still faced the same problem I had in Brockton Bay; most villains took care not to be easily found, and I didn't have the Thinker abilities to make that a negligible problem.

The thought of cracking open the Birdcage was attractive to me for a number of reasons, but I wasn't to the point where I had to do it yet. I could probably slip in through the mirror universe, but I wasn't sure how much Dragon supervised the villains inside. An attack on the Birdcage might lead to me being considered hostile by the Protectorate.

Worse, Masters tended to be disproportionately sent to the Birdcage, which meant I had a real reason to avoid taking it until I had better defenses.

As I waited for morning, I swam around the ocean, enjoying my new view of the world. Leviathan's power let me see everything in the water, senses extended across vast distances. I could see the fish, the divers, the boats...everything. If I ever needed money it would be easy for me to find and excavate shipwrecks.

As I swam I considered calling the Travelers. If I could find a Cape with the power to make people forget things I'd be able to use their pet monster to replicate the powers of Capes that I wanted. From all accounts being sides of her was emotionally traumatizing, but if they didn't remember what happened it wouldn't be so bad.

I'd gotten the location of Canary's trial from the Internet. She was due to be sentenced today and if she was sentenced to the Birdcage I needed to be there to make my offer publicly.

Invisibility was another power that would be nice to have.

Instead I waited on the rooftop of the building across from the courthouse, listening to the proceedings inside. I listened to the sounds of the jury deliberations finishing up and I knew what the verdict was going to be.

" _They will find you guilty_ ," I whispered. The winds carried my voice through the crowds and into the courtroom, to where only the woman could hear it.

I could hear her heartbeat starting to race.

" _I can make sure you never go to the Birdcage_ ," I said. " _Take your power and you will never be forced to go there_."

She couldn't speak because she was muzzled, but it didn't matter. I could listen to her heartrate and breathing and I could tell she was interested.

I waited until the jury was called back in before I moved.

Floating down to the entrance of the courthouse, in full view of the throng of hundreds of reporters, I approached the front door.

A guard tried to step in front of me; it was possible that he didn't recognize me with my clothes on. I phased through him and I phased through the door. I floated six inches off the floor and as I approached the metal detector I saw one of the officers speaking hurriedly into his communicator.

Neither of them asked for my ID as I floated through the metal detector. It went off as I passed through, probably because of my metal armor, but neither guard said anything.

"Which courtroom has Canary's trial?" I asked one of the men.

"Courtoom three," One of the officers said. He quickly gave me directions and as I floated down the hallway I could hear them arguing behind me.

"Let the Protectorate capes there deal with her," he was saying to the other man. "What are we going to do, get blood on her shoe?"

It was a remarkably pragmatic approach, one that I approved of entirely.

As I approached the doorway to the courtroom, three Protectorate Capes emerged to face me.

"Why are you here?" the only one of the three that I recognized said. Bastion had been at the Leviathan fight, so he had to know he couldn't defeat me. His heart rate was highly elevated even though his face was impassive.

There had been a scandal of some sort about him making some kind of a racist remark. His career had never really recovered.

I didn't speak, I simply continued to float toward them.

He created force fields over the three of them and the doorway. I could have broken through them easily, but I wasn't here to hurt anyone. Instead I simply turned sideways and shadowed through the wall.

Shadow Stalker had been vulnerable to electricity, but I barely felt the current as I shadowed through the wall.

The judge was speaking to the jury when the gasps of some of the people in the room cause him to look up.

Everyone in the room turned to stare at me as I floated down the center of the aisle. No one said anything and even though the three members of the Protectorate stepped back into the room they did nothing to stop me.

I stopped by the defendant's desk.

Paige Mcabee looked miserable. She was wearing heavy restraints and her face was muzzled. They'd done everything they could to make her look guilty. I wondered if her public defender was in on it; a competent defender would have argued against her being portrayed like this.

In a normal trial she might even have had a chance to appeal, but once she was in the Birdcage no appeal was possible.

I held my hand out and she looked up at me.

She reached up and took my hand, and a moment later I felt the familiar pleasure of power being drained.

The feathers in her hair immediately dropped to the floor.

I touched her manacles and I willed them into the mirror universe. They vanished. I did the same to her muzzle. They would reappear when I dropped the universe, but in the meantime she was free of them.

"She is no longer parahuman," I turned, speaking to the speechless judge. "Sentencing her to the Birdcage would be a death sentence."

A moment later I flew straight upward, shadowing as I reached the ceiling.

Below I could hear pandemonium from the courtroom, and the judge demanding order.

I felt a sense of contentment. I had the power that I'd wanted and an innocent woman would be free of the Birdcage. It was likely that she would still face extensive jail time, but this time she'd have a chance to have multiple appeals.

I might even covertly slip her a little money for a defense fund if I could do it undetected.

After all, had things gone differently it very well could have been me in that courtroom waiting to have my entire life ended because people were afraid of me.

The fortunate thing was that even with my new power they could hardly be more afraid of me.

It was possible that I would be wrong. That being said, I needed to take the powers that I could before certain people got wise to what I was planning. Once they learned they'd scatter to the wind, and I'd have trouble finding them.

Traveling seven thousand miles underwater was surprisingly easy. I should have left a massive wake, but with hydrokinesis at my level I didn't have to. Gliding through the water was a pleasure different than taking powers or setting things on fire, but I had to fight the urge to explore as I came across shipwrecks and strange creatures that I wasn't sure had ever been cataloged by scientists.

I should have gotten lost, but I could feel she shape of the continent closest to me through the water, and as I approached I simply had to follow the line of the shore south.

Surfacing several times, I snatched my PRT phone from dimensional storage and checked GPS to double check my location.

The last hundred and fifty miles had to be on land, and there I didn't have nearly the speed I'd had in the water. Despite that I managed to race over dirt roads and across the African savannah, checking my phone to make sure I was on the right track.

Reaching the city of Windhoek in Namibia, I changed my face and form as I approached the city. I dropped into the mirror universe and changed clothes into a black hoodie.

I returned to the real world and I flagged down a car driving down the dirt road.

It was in terrible condition, looking even worse than the cars in Brockton Bay, but the man inside looked friendly enough. Namibia had English as its official language, so I suspected that I'd be able to communicate.

"Do you speak English?" I asked.

"Can I help you?" he asked in perfectly serviceable English.

I cleared my throat and began to hum the song from the Little Mermaid, one movie that hadn't changed between my world and that of Earth Aleph. It was a wordless song, but somehow my voice seemed to scintillate in a way it never had before.

"Take me to the Moord Nag," I sang, my voice suddenly as amazing as that of a trained Broadway singer.

His eyes glazed over.

"B...but you seem like such a nice girl. Why?"

He hesitated for a moment, a compliment to his strength of will before he gestured. I jumped into the back of his pickup truck and we were on our way. I watched as the city approached with wide open eyes.

It was my first time out of Brockton Bay, if you didn't count trips to Boston, and everything looked exotic.

Windhoek was the nicest capital city in Africa, or at least it had been until the Moord Nag and other warlords had turned portions of Africa into a barren wasteland. It was possible that it was even nicer now in comparison to the other cities; I did not know.

Surprisingly it looked almost as large as Brockton Bay had been, before the recent series of disasters that had plagued the city. It looked much more modern than I would have expected. Hollywood always made Africa looked like a primitive hellhole that looked like a post apocalyptic wasteland. In Hollywood Africa didn't even have cities.

Apparently that was a lie.

The people I saw as we drove through town didn't looked all that frightened; instead they simply looked resigned. However, I could feel the residual fear that all of them felt. I probably could have found the stronghold simply by following the increase in the level of fear; the closer they got to her fortress the more anxious everyone got.

"They'll kill me if we get any closer," the man driving the car said.

"Thank you," I said. "Why don't you go about your day."

I thought about it and I plucked a hundred dollar bill from my Dimensional pocket and handed it to him. "I hope this makes this a little better for you."

I figured that ought to be worth the equivalent of ten grand over here, although that could be more lies Hollywood was selling me. The man's expression seemed to indicate that he was pleased though, so I didn't question it.

I began walking toward the complex, which had large stone walls and men at the top of them with machine guns and missile launchers.

"Stop or we'll shoot!"

I continued walking, and a moment later I felt bullets putting holes in my hoodie. Excited speech in a language I didn't understand was followed by machine guns shredding my hoodie and that was followed by a missile launcher.

I reached up and snatched the missile out of the air, staring at it curiously before I turned it around, sending it back at the men who'd shot it at me. They didn't even know who I was and they were trying to kill me. They knew exactly what their master was and they had chosen to serve her anyway.

They deserved everything that they got.

Still, there was no need for more bloodshed than there had to be.

I made sure the winds carried my song over the entire complex.

" _Open the doors and let me in_ ," I sang. " _Put down your arms and you won't be harmed. It's time to rest, it's time to sleep. It's time to stop your life of sin.."_

The tune was from an Earth Aleph movie about witches, a song one of the witches had used to lure children away from their parents on All Hallow's eve.

The Lyrics weren't the best, but I was improvising. None of the men seemed to be critics though. The bullets hitting me stuttered to a stop and moments later the doors to the complex opened. I could have simply walked through the walls, but I wanted every man in the complex to remember that I had walked in and there was nothing they could do to stop me.

I continued to sing, and the men around me began to droop and slide to the floor, snoozing. It wouldn't take much to wake them, but that didn't matter.

There wasn't anything they could do against me anyway, and I really wanted to try out my new power in combat conditions. So far it was working like a charm.

It was a powerful ability, possibly one of the most powerful Master abilities out there, and considering that I could amplify the range it was heard from it would help me win at times when killing wasn't the best idea.

I was good at killing, but I wanted to be better at building, creating, making a better world. That would take cooperation, and now I was able to get it.

Walking slowly through the complex, I idly noted dozens of men armed with AK-47s. Most of them looked hardened by life, like the kind of people who wouldn't hesitate to kill their own grandmothers if the pay was right.

Most of them were slumped down on the floor, but I kept singing softly as I walked through the complex. It wasn't hard to find the Moord Nag as she was the only one who'd somehow managed to resist the effect of my song. I could hear her heart racing at a accelerated rate, and the allure of her power called to me.

People were going to die in the upcoming conflicts. If I could use that to get even stronger it might make the difference between success and failure. It would also free a country from the rule of a monster who demanded its best and brightest as sacrifices.

She actually had a throne room, as though she was some kind of an actual queen instead of a petty despot. The doors were massive, at least twenty feet tall and probably thick.

The smallest act of will caused the Siberian to appear. She kicked the doors down, and they fell with a thunderous crash. Despite my song, that probably woke some of the guards, but I really didn't care. There was nothing they could do to me.

Only the Moord Nag had the smallest chance of hurting me, and she was about to get her chance.

She spoke in a language that I didn't recognize. I could see her creature beside her, swollen with stolen lives. The Internet wasn't specific about her power, but I knew there had to be a reason that she demanded sacrifices and deaths. She didn't need them to keep control of her country, and she wasn't wiping out her political enemies. The most logical thought was that her power needed it to get stronger.

She stared at me haughtily and I wondered if she even recognized who I was.

I shrugged and dropped into the mirror universe, dashing across the room at a speed no human would be able to follow. I appeared next to her and grabbed her by the face. I could feel her creature tearing away at my flesh, having moved faster than I would have expected.

It actually hurt a little, which was promising.

I drained her, and then I snapped her neck.

Summoning her creature was a disappointment. The creature had been larger than a horse, but the one I summoned was small enough to fit in the palm of my hand.

Well, no worries. I was sure it would grow.


	62. Camp

Looking around at the burning remnants of the Moord Nag's complex, I wondered why I'd even bothered. Discovering the girls held in the basement had removed all hesitation from me. Whether they'd been there as a reward for the men or as a snack for the Moord Nag's pet monster, it didn't matter. The men guarding the complex were complicit in what was happening.

The monster on my palm had barely grown at all though, despite dozens of deaths. How many had it taken to reach a size where it could harm an Endbringer, even a little?

Releasing the girls had been easy once everyone was dead. A simple song and they'd ignored what was going on around them. I led them outside the complex and I gave them some of the money and weapons I'd had the Siberian loot from the bodies.

Not all of them knew how to use a gun, but enough of them did that I was fairly confident that they weren't going to be immediately re-enslaved the moment I left.

After that, returning home involved nothing more than a pleasant jog through town. I stopped at a market and bought a dozen more hoodies for a great price. It would take people a while to realize what had happened, and so I enjoyed the market for a good half hour.

After that I ran through a series of mirror universes, appearing and reappearing until I got out of town, at which point I sprinted across the land, running fast enough that no one in a car would be able to catch me, especially cross country.

Every nature documentary I'd ever seen had shown thousands of animals running everywhere all over Africa. That was apparently also a lie. I did manage to see a sickly looking Zebra. I stopped and tried to call it over to me but it was skittish and ran off.

I had intended to give it a little taste of Othalla's regeneration, but apparently some creatures tended to be ungrateful.

I reached the sea and plunged in. I was infinitely faster by sea than I was by land and I was less visible by satellite. I made my way up the coast at a speed that nothing else in the world could underwater. What I'd done to the Moord Nag had undoubtedly been noticed by now and there might be people who were less than happy about that.

I didn't really care about that. There wasn't a lot anyone could do, especially if I confined myself to taking out threats. There would be people who were alarmed by my growing power, but those people would already be worried. Other people would think I was doing the world a favor, getting rid of the worst of the worst. The fact that I was consolidating my power and getting stronger by the day would matter less than the fact that everyone else was a little safer.

Whatever I did now was going to cause ripples, and until I got the Simurgh's power I wasn't going to know what those were. My only option was to try to do the most good I could in the shortest time while getting stronger as fast as I could.

Taking the Ash Beast would be a service to the world, but his seemed like a power that was uncontrollable, and not in a way that could be modified by Bonesaw's power either. He'd never been seen to leave his living explosion form, and my guess was that he would have if he could, if only to get a break.

Better to avoid it until I got more thinkers or at least more Trumps. His power seemed like one of those that would leave me losing even as I won.

Returning to Brockton Bay was easy; the ocean was my home. There was a strange allure to it; I had a feeling that it would be very easy to simply retreat to the sea when things got too difficult on land. I wondered if space was the same for the Simurgh.

The Nilbog was an obvious second choice, but I didn't have to worry about him getting away; he was trapped in his town and had too many creatures with him to move easily, unlike most of the other major threats.

As I reached the Bay I thought about creating my own lair under the city. There was an undersea reservoir down there; it would be possible for me to create a lair that no one could easily reach other than possibly Dragon in her suits. I could probably even do it undetected.

It wasn't as though I needed a lair for myself; after all I could simply rest at the bottom of the bay. It wasn't that I needed to sleep physically, but mentally I needed time to relax and contemplate.

I could even make a giant Penny and create a Dinosaur statue. Dad would love that. I suspected that while he'd never wanted to be a vigilante punching mentally unstable people by night, he wouldn't have minded being Alfred. He'd always liked cool cars and now I could make him one, assuming I could reign in my desires to go large and proud.

The thought of him driving around in a Squealer special made me want to giggle.

Unfortunately there wasn't time to bother with building a Batcave, or in my case a Leviathan Lair. In the wake of the attack people were trying to gather up the remnants of their lives. There was a huge and growing tent city to the west of Brockton Bay. The city was trying to set up port-a-potties and supply food and water, but the city barely had the resources to keep their own doors open.

I felt a little guilty. My intervention had caused Leviathan to take off the kid gloves, and while I'd been able to save most of the lives he would have taken, the property damage people suffered had been much greater. There were people today who had lost everything because I'd chosen Brockton Bay as the place I was going to take a stand.

I could hear fighting from the camps now, fighting that was threatening to expand into a riot.

Running across the city, I looked out across the landscape. I'd been arrogant. People needed power, but what they needed more quickly than that was food and water and good sanitation.

They also needed hope.

I'd overheard PRT estimates that there were thirty thousand people gathering in the camps, but I hadn't realized it was this bad. Maybe it hadn't been when I'd been working earlier, but what port-a-potties were available were now overflowing and people were growing angry.

Many people were doing their best to help their neighbors, but Brockton Bay had never lacked thugs who found it easier to take what others had than to earn their own way. Some of those were among the otherwise law abiding people doing what they had always done.

Unfortunately many people were less willing than they had been before. They were hot and sweaty. They had lost everything they had. They were hungry and thirst and above all tired.

Many felt they had been forgotten, much as the citizens of other cities that had been devastated had.

Together it was creating a powderkeg that only needed the smallest spark to ignite, and the PRT and the police force didn't have enough people combined to make much of a difference.

As I reached the edge of the encampment I was horrified. Most people didn't even have tents; sleeping bags were more common but it was evident that only a portion of people had those.

I could hear people coughing; the close proximity and exposure to sewer water was already making some people sick. In close conditions like this disease could spread like wildfire.

These were my people, the people of Brockton Bay, and I could hear a brawl in the distance. I could see people running in my direction, doubtlessly trying to get away from the fight. Many stopped as they saw me floating; I'd changed back into my outfit of glass and steel.

I floated higher and I saw that there were Protectorate members here, but against a crowd of hundreds that they didn't want to hurt it was difficult going. They were at the edges of the crowd. Ordinarily they'd have been spraying containment foam everywhere, but it was in critically short supply. The chemicals that dissolved it were in even shorter supply.

Although the people who were outside of the massed crowd saw me and quickly turned away, fleeing as quickly as they could, the combatants were too busy pummeling each other.

I began to sing, quietly at first, but Stormtiger's winds carried the sounds to every ear while carrying the sounds of the fight away from people. People were afraid, which meant that the winds carried my song further and with more finesse than would normally be possible.

" _Lay down your arms,"_ I began. " _It's time for peace. Your neighbors aren't your enemies."_

People slowed down and many of them stopped and started to turn. There were a few stragglers, but everyone started turning toward me.

" _It's time to rest, it's time to play, everyone will be cared for_ ," I sang.

It didn't even rhyme, but I'd never been particularly musically talented, and I'd never so much as written a single song. I couldn't think of a song in pop culture that had the right worlds and so I had to make my own.

No one seemed to care. The sound of my voice was causing people everywhere to turn and listen to me. Even the members of the Protectorate seemed to be entranced, although I noticed that both Dragon in her suit and Armsmaster seemed immune. I wouldn't be surprised if they hadn't installed some sort of technology to guard against this sort of attack.

When everyone was finally silent I spoke.

"If you don't stand together you will die," I said. For a moment I wondered if what I was saying could be considered a threat; I didn't mean it that way. "There are too many people here to fight each other over food and water and shelter."

One brave man stared up at me and spoke. "There's not enough water, or toilets or toilet paper. Some of us haven't eaten in two days."

I closed my eyes and reached deeply into the ground. With the addition of people's fear, both of me and of the fight that had just happened, Kaiser's power responded more smoothly than it ever had. Instead of creating metal that sprang up, I forced it down.

Leviathan's hydrokinesis needed no extra enhancement.

To the people in the crowd it must have looked as though the ground was erupting all around them. People screamed, but no one ran, probably because of the influence of my song.

"Water is being provided," I said.

I was shifting the water table beneath the city, forcing water upward in ways that cracked the rock above. I mentally carried the sediment away even as metal tubes wound their way downward.

Natural springs were sprouting up, dozens of them. The water beneath the city was clear and pure; I could feel it from here. I was creating water that flowed without pumps and without additional input from me.

Building spigots with Kaiser's crude powers would normally have been difficult, but I had more power and finesse now with thousands of fearful people all around me.

Moments later water sprang from the fountains.

It was only a temporary solution. Without people to clean the fountains they'd eventually become contaminated, but for the moment it would keep people alive.

I gestured again. Walls of metal began to rise and people began to scramble away as I began to create primitive metal huts. Each was large enough to hold twenty people and I was creating fifty of them at a time.

I needed fifteen hundred of them.

Fortunately Mannequin's knowledge included the optimal distance between structures as well as some primitive solutions to make them more livable. Summoning glass from the destroyed city, I began to create solar tubes to light the interior of the structures. Funnels where the windows would have been could lower the temperature inside by almost twenty degrees.

I began creating large solar ovens, each large enough to cook food for a hundred people, assuming it wasn't cloudy. Fortunately I had some control of that with Leviathan's power.

People were backing away as I did all of these things at the same time. Leviathan's powers helped me multitask to a degree I couldn't before.

I thought for a moment. People were reluctant to talk to me for obvious reasons. I needed people who were willing an able to keep order in the camps, people who would have a certain amount of authority.

"Members of the Dockworker's Union step forward," I said.

It took almost thirty minutes for the three hundred of them to step forward. Some had already evacuated the city while others had houses in town. The Dockworkers however had disproportionately been impacted by Leviathan's destruction because most of them had lived near the shore.

I recognized most of them from my time's visiting Dad's work. A lot of them were people my Dad counted as friends. For the moment it was convenient. They were less likely to be intimidated by me, and they tended to be practical people who knew how to get things done.

"These men are friends of my father," I said. "Which means they are _my_ friends. I'll take it personally if any of them is hurt."

The wind carried my voice to everyone in the massive crowd.

"If you have concerns, bring them to one of these men and they'll bring them to me the next time I visit."

I gestured and using flames and control over glass, I proceeded to create three hundred glass roses, each a hundred times as tough as normal glass with metal pins.

"They'll wear my symbol," I said. I'd chosen roses because they would be harder to counterfeit than something like a tin star. The last thing I needed was for gangs to claim to be operating in my name while extorting from people or taking advantage.

"Those who know how to cook on campfires step forward," I commanded, my quiet voice carried to every ear.

No one stepped forward, so I repeated the command again, this time while humming. The Dockworker's sprang into action with crowd control, and soon people were straggling in. While I waited I continued to build shelters and solar cookers.

I soon had five hundred volunteers. Who knew that camping was so popular? As I continued the construction all around, I explained the peculiarities of cooking on a solar cooker with the volunteers as I lashed out with my will again.

Structure after structure I build, using fire and flame and glass and metal. People were quiet, staring at me long after it should have been boring.

"This is nice and all," one of the Dockworkers said two hours later, "But we don't have anything to cook."

I gestured and metal began to spread around my feet, spreading fifty feet in all directions. People gasped as a monstrous ball of water appeared on the horizon. It floated in the air slowly, coming toward us.

I levitated and a moment later the ball was over the concave plate. Tons of fish began to drop out of the ball onto the large concave metal plate.

"I'm afraid that meat is all I have to offer tonight," I said. "I can't offer you blankets or medicine or toilet paper. What I can tell you is that if FEMA does not have supplies for everyone in the morning I will personally crack open their warehouses. I will make sure that every man woman and child gets food and water and shelter."

I floated a little higher so that people could get a better look at me. The sun was high in the sky, and the light caught the fragments of glass on my costume making me sparkle and shine.

"It looks dark now," I said. "You have all lost property and livelihoods. Some of you have lost pets. But for the first time an Endbringer was unable to take the lives of more than a few people. Humanity has been afraid from the moment that the Endbringers first appeared."

I had everyone's full attention now.

"I swear that I will do everything in my power to end their reign for once and for all. No longer will people have to cower in fear at night, wondering if their city will be next. No longer will companies avoid shipping for fear of calling down Leviathan's wrath. We stand on the cusp of a new age, one of unparalleled prosperity for everyone."

I hesitated. "Right now that might not seem like much of a comfort, not after you have lost everything you have. But fighting each other will strip you of the one thing you still have left, your humanity. Together you can create a community that will support you long enough for you to rebuild your lives. I don't know how long that will take; I don't think anyone can except maybe some people in the government. What I do know is that you can choose to make the life you are living right now a living hell or you can make the best of it."

Turning to Armsmaster, I said, "Tell the government that I expect Port-a-potties, blankets, fresh food and water. I would appreciate it if you would have Kid Win or another Tinker help run power to here from the nearest solar road."

"You are my people," I said, turning back to the crowd. "And I will do what I can to protect you. You will not be forgotten."

I made sure to hum as I spoke the last sentence so that the message would get through to them all.

Dropping down to the ground, I told the Dockworkers "Bring me your sick and I will heal them."

As people began to line up I knew I was going to be at this for several hours yet. At least by the time I was done dinner would be ready.

Watching the Dockworkers getting to work getting people to take fish to the solar cookers, I knew I'd made the right choice.


	63. Silver Lining

She essentially took the city without firing a single shot," Director Tagg said.

"I'm sure she doesn't think of it that way," Dragon said. "She stopped a riot and provided humanitarian aid, aid that should have already arrived."

Tagg scowled. "FEMA has been playing politics with other organizations and there's been some confusion about who has jurisdiction."

"I'm hoping that has been resolved," Dragon said.

Tagg nodded. "Having an Endbringer threaten to visit lit some fires under people to get things in order. There are truckloads coming; many of them will arrive overnight and people will have at least some of what they need by morning."

"Then she has accomplished a goal that we should all share."

"She Mastered thirty thousand people," Tagg said. "With less effort than it would take me to drink a cup of coffee."

"Were the PRT policy on Masters different, was it any different than what we would have done?" Dragon asked.

"We shouldn't have even been out there in the first place," he said. "Our jurisdiction is strictly limited to parahuman events, and there are barely any parahumans left in Brockton Bay. If other agencies think we are interfering in their bailiwick they'll start pushing back."

The truth was that with both their headquarters gone there wasn't really a lot the Protectorate or PRT could accomplish. They were having trouble organizing their own people much less helping the community.

Tagg was making the excuse that would be the party line, but Dragon knew him well enough that she knew it bothered him greatly to be unable to help people.

"We were all there on our off time," Dragon said smoothly. "Of which the others have an ample supply now that the villains are mostly gone."

"And you?" Tagg asked.

Dragon made her avatar blush. "I was spending the day with Colin. Since he was trying to help out in the camps that's where I ended up."

"You know the paperwork you'll have to fill out if things progress past a certain point," Tagg said shortly.

It wasn't ever likely to become physical for reasons Dragon intended no one to ever know.

"I'm still not so certain why everyone was so upset," she said. "Everything Taylor did was in the service of helping the people we are supposed to serve. The PRT was founded to help human parahuman relations; what better public relations could we get than something like this?"

"She threatened the United States government," Tagg said tiredly. He lifted one hand to forestall her argument. "I would probably have been tempted to say something similar to what she said, but if I said it people would know it was hyperbole. She is fully capable of doing it and there isn't anything anyone can do about it."

Dragon had to admit to herself that she hadn't been entirely sure that Taylor hadn't been serious. Part of her was deeply convinced that she had been.

"Furthermore, she created her own police force on the soil of the United States of America," Tagg said.

"She asked for volunteers," Dragon said calmly.

"Volunteers who have her personal backing, with an implied threat that should they be harmed she will take personal vengeance," Tagg said. "She could have asked for police officers, firemen, anybody with an ounce of real authority."

"Without her personal backing I doubt anyone would have followed anyone trying to keep order. The police are as homeless as anyone there, and because their families are with them there is an implicit threat that keeps them from being fully effective."

Tagg clenched his fist. "It shouldn't be like this. I don't think that she's trying to take over any more than you do; if the proper authorities were able to keep control she'd be off playing with whales or whatever she does in her spare time."

He sighed. "Despite that, Washington is concerned. The Congolese are already moving in on Namibia which is itself falling into a civil war as the warlords who worked for the Moord Nag are all vying for supremacy. It will probably end up resulting in more deaths than she's managed to save so far."

Dragon made her avatar shrug. "So we're not to do anything for fear of the consequences? There's a reason the PRT's critics have been complaining for years that we aren't accomplishing anything. We're so concerned about avoiding power vacuums that we don't actually capture any villains."

"What she did in the courtroom could be considered obstruction of justice," Tagg said. "Assuming you could find a prosecutor suicidal enough to try the case."

"It was justice, and you know it," Dragon said. "I've lodged protests about how her trial was being handled from the very beginning. At least now she'll have a chance to get a real trial."

The thought that she'd have been forced by her programming to send an innocent to the Birdcage horrified her.

"It's not as though anyone would send her to the Birdcage anyway," Tagg said. "She'd either eat everyone there, or one of them would manage to Master her, which is the world's greatest nightmare other than Scion turning evil."

He glanced at her and they both shuddered. They'd both seen the pictures and had received confirmation that certain parts of the government had known about this for years. It was the kind of horrifying knowledge that would have kept Dragon up at night had she actually needed sleep.

The disproportionate number of Masters in the Birdcage had bothered Dragon for a long time. Crimes that would result in jail time for a Brute would get a Master birdcaged on the first strike.

Tagg sighed. "Washington wants recommendations about how to handle her. As though we hadn't been trying to kill Leviathan for decades. How to do handle someone you can't kill, who doesn't need to eat or drink or even wear clothes if she doesn't want? Trying to leverage her father is likely to end very badly according to Tattletale and we don't have anything else she wants."

"Give her what she really wants," Dragon suggested. "Names and addresses of S-class threats that she can drain at will."

"She'll just get harder to deal with every power we feed her," Tagg said. He grimaced. "Washington is going to expect a military recommendation and I don't exactly have one."

"I think you should first emphasize that she is at least nominally on our side and recommend against doing anything that jeopardizes that," Dragon said. "I'll go over my list of parahuman abilities and make a list of people who might have any chance to affecting her. We can go over strategies once that list is finalized."

Tagg nodded soberly. "Anything else?"

"Helping the people of Brockton Bay became a parahuman issue the minute she stepped in. We now have jurisdiction, and nobody can argue with it."

He brightened. "There are a lot of our people that are chafing at the bit to do something productive while we're trying to get a temporary Rig built. Any progress on that?"

"We're flying in temporary buildings that can be interlocked together like pieces of a puzzle," dragon said. "We ought to have temporary quarters by the end of the week, although the Protectorate and PRT will have to share quarters."

"Anything would be better than staying here," Tagg said. "The walls are razor thin and I didn't get any sleep last night since the couple next door decided to have a knockdown, drag out fight before engaging in what sounded like a marathon session of horizontal dancing in the bedroom."

"Aren't you rooming next to Deputy Director Renick?" Dragon asked.

Tagg looked disgusted. "Which means I had to look him in the eye the next morning and pretend I didn't know anything."

"One of the costs of leadership, I'm sure," Dragon said primly.

"I'm switching rooms with a trooper on the other side of the hotel," Tagg said. "It's not a good idea to have both of us so close to each other in case of an attack anyway."

He couldn't just request another room because all rooms were occupied. The fact that he was willing to downgrade his room accommodations was telling.

Dragon made a note to speed up the modules she was sending to construct the new temporary Rig. Morale was already bad enough and the last thing anyone needed was for fights to break out between people who were supposed to be keeping the peace.

The meeting didn't last much longer after that.

While Dragon hadn't approved of what had happened to Emily Piggot, it was nice to work with someone who wasn't a closeted bigot against parahumans. The fact that Piggot would have likely been even more distrustful of her than ordinary parahumans had made their relationship more strained than it had to be.

Tagg was a pragmatist. He didn't always make good decisions, but he was willing to listen to good advice and he wasn't willing to throw lives away on a fool's errand.

Switching her avatar to a different room in the hotel, she found herself wishing for the connectivity of the Rig. There she'd had access to all the cameras on the inside as well as security systems and conveniently placed terminals in every room.

In the hotel she only had terminals where she'd specifically placed them; otherwise she had to go in one of her armored suits which were heavy enough that she worried about the flooring in the hotel, which was old and dilapidated.

She caused her terminal to give a thirty second warning. She'd discovered to her regret that teenage girls had body image issues and became agitated when people appeared suddenly in their room, even if only in holographic form.

"Girls?" she asked.

"Dragon!" Glory Girl said. Panacea was in the hotel room, looking over what looked to be her homework. She looked up and gave a little wave.

Given that Dragon had been her teacher for the last few weeks she entirely approved. Why let catastrophe and devastation hinder an education?

"How are you girls holding up?" Dragon asked. "Do I need to send a shuttle to bring you home?"

She'd been forced into the role of being mother to two teenage girls. While it was not a role she'd ever planned to be in, she'd found herself enjoying the task. It was a lot more immediate than attempting to change the world in broad strokes.

Glory Girl shook her head. "You've been great to us... better than our own mother, but people need us here."

"There's evidence that Sylar is not as dead as everyone initially surmised," Dragon said.

"He managed to hide in the PRT for weeks without killing anyone," Panacea said. "And he told Taylor that since he got that kid's x-ray vision he no longer needs to kill."

"That doesn't mean that we won't make him pay for what he did to our family," Glory Girl said darkly.

She'd already been depressed before her family had been murdered. Her depression had gotten dark before it had finally started to get better. Both the girls were still in counseling, although Panacea had handled the deaths of her entire family much better than her sister.

Maybe it was the fact that she'd been exposed to death constantly ever since her power had manifested. Or maybe it was how she'd been treated in the Dallon household. It had taken Dragon weeks to get her to open up about it and she wasn't sure that Amy would ever fully talk about her feelings.

Still, they'd both blossomed in Canada and Dragon only hoped that returning here didn't reverse some of the progress they'd made.

"What are people saying about Taylor Hebert?" Dragon asked. She knew that the girls had been in contact with their friends, especially since Arcadia's students had lived in districts that had been less affected by the tidal waves.

No one in the city had been unaffected, but at least the Arcadia students had houses that were still standing.

"People are afraid of her," Glory Girl said soberly. "But hopeful. She's doing some real good out there, even if how she's going about it isn't always the best."

"I would have been out there helping people," Panacea said. "If the PRT hadn't been worried someone would kidnap me."

She looked at her hands and scowled. "I'm not some precious little snowflake. I can defend myself quite easily."

"Like I'd let anybody kidnap you," Glory Girl said. "Hebert already ate most of the parahumans in town. We should be out there helping the needy!"

"Director Tagg has agreed to let you have limited operations tomorrow," Dragon said. "Assuming you finish your homework."

Panacea grinned smugly. Glory Girl scowled and mouthed something at Panacea about being a suck up. Her face was turned away so Dragon didn't see all of it, but she was fairly certain she could predict the context.

If only Taylor Hebert was as easy to predict. Her communications with Tattletale had painted a disturbing picture. Hebert was the definition of unstable. Some of the new powers she took had a clear influence over her personality, some more than others.

While she was seemingly benevolent now, that could change the moment she got a power that twisted her in an unpredictable way. Dragon was trying to work up predictive software with Armsmaster, Dr. Yamada and Tattletale, but it was slow going.

"There will be trucks arriving early tomorrow morning to distribute food and blankets," Dragon said. "While Taylor Hebert did what she did to heal people, there are many people who have conditions that her abilities aren't really designed for."

"Diabetics, people with liver and kidney disease, cancer patients," Panacea said in a bored voice. "People that need chronic, long term meds. If I cure them, it'll mean one less thing that the government has to supply people."

"Amy!" Glory Girl said. "You get to be a hero to the masses! People will love you!"

"Like they loved me for the last two years?"

"They just got used to having you around. Now that you've been gone long enough, they'll appreciate you more."

"So I should take more vacations?"

"Yes!" Glory Girl said. "Isn't that what Dr. Yamada has been telling us all along?"

Dragon understood the crippling fear of setting down her burdens, of the harm that would happen when she took time for herself. She resented her creator for hobbling her; in a just world she'd be doing a hundred tasks right now instead of delegating them to less capable programs.

She'd had to learn the hard way that she needed time to herself almost as much as a living, real person did. Her time with Colin had let her grow as a person in ways that years of Tinkering and following directions never had.

"It didn't bother you that she Mastered all those people?" Dragon asked.

"I'm a Master myself," Glory Girl said, shrugging, "At least according to some people. If I'd done the same thing nobody would have said a thing about it."

"Because you'd have Mastered them into liking you," Panacea said dryly.

Discovering that Panacea wasn't immune to her sister's aura had been part of the healing. Dragon wasn't pertinent to all of the details; Dr. Yamada was scrupulous about confidentiality and was careful to keep all her records on systems not connected online. She'd heard enough to get a basic understanding though.

Working through some of that had been part of what had led to the girls both seeming more mentally healthy now, although Dragon knew they both still had a long way to go.

Neither one of them had been in a good place after they'd fled Brockton Bay, and it had taken a lot of work to get them as mentally healthy as they were now. Dragon could only hope that being back in familiar places didn't bring back old, familiar feelings.

"Taylor Hebert has taken an interest in the refugees," Dragon said. "How will you handle her?"

"However she wants?" Glory Girl said. "I've mostly forgiven her for the whole making me murder a guy thing, and even if I hadn't, what could I do now that she's an Endbringer?"

"She was Crystal's friend," Panacea said quietly. "I'll try to be nice because of that."

"And not because she could suck you dry like a raisin and then use Bonesaw's power to turn you into a zombie?" Glory Girl asked.

"I've seen how she looks at me sometimes, the few times we were around each other. I think she'd really like to have my power, so I'm going to be particularly nice to her."

There had been a time when Amy would have thankfully given away her power, but that time was long past.

"She's pretty isolated right now," Dragon said. "Her father is...away, and she has no one else. People are concerned that might not be psychologically healthy. If you get a chance to befriend her, it might be a good idea to take it."

"A good idea for us?" Panacea asked.

"A good idea for everyone," Dragon said. "Remember how you felt a few weeks ago, Victoria, then imagine that you couldn't kill yourself and knew that you would never age, or need to eat or get sick or maybe even die. An eternity of your family and friends dying and aging around you as you remained as you were."

Glory Girl grimaced.

Dragon made her avatar glance at Amy. She hadn't directed her statement toward Amy because Amy knew intimately what it was like to have the ability to destroy cities and civilizations. It was possible that she could destroy humanity even faster than Taylor Hebert could.

After all, Taylor could destroy cities one by one. Amy could create pandemics that would wipe out billions in days.

Maybe interacting with people who were her own age who had similar situations would be good fro Taylor.

Dragon needed some hope to bring back to the government before they did something foolish. Of course, given the way bureaucracies worked, they might not actually take action until after the world ended.

There was always a silver lining.


	64. Missing

"It seems to be going well," I said.

New portable toilets were being put up even as dozens of trucks were pulling into the area with blankets and pillows and meals ready to eat. It could have been a riot with people fighting over the supplies, but the Dockworkers were keeping things orderly.

Supplies were being distributed to the buildings I had created and I was currently carefully loading the second of two ice machines that had been donated by a company in Georgia. Each was the size of a small shipping container, and each would produce up to thirteen thousand pounds of ice every day.

Kid Win had already run lines to the closest solar roads, which I had extended into the camps. He was now busy building converters that would take the energy from the roads and safely use it to power whatever devices the community needed.

Of course, they would only supply power during the day and Kid Win was dealing with a lab he'd put together in the basement of a Holiday Inn, but plans had been sent to Dragon who was manufacturing what he'd come up with and was going to send samples out later this afternoon.

I was a little concerned that this would make spaces closest to the solar road more valuable to people while spaces farther away would be ghettoized. I was running out of good sand from the bottom of the Bay, though, and if I continued I'd need to start going farther afield.

Submitting plans for massive batteries to contain the energy from the solar roads had taken me the better part of an hour using a satellite empowered laptop Dragon had sent me. She'd promised to have them built in three days, which had impressed me. It would take Uber and Leet a week.

The Dockworker who had been chosen to speak for the rest looked at me uncomfortably. I'd known him from before; he was a friend of my father who'd been over to our house for barbecues before Mom had died.

"We've got things under control," he said. "After last night most people do what we say. We got people to clean the crap off the ground, put the trash in piles..."

Right. I'd forgotten to make trashcans. My threat to create spiderbots to clean up if people didn't had probably helped.

"So what's the problem?" I asked.

"Kids have been going missing. People went to sleep and their kids were just... gone."

"Do you have a list?" I asked.

He nodded and handed it over. Writing paper, like everything else was precious, but as the head of the Hebert Brigade he was allowed special privileges.

The fact that the Dockworkers had sent teams into to town to scavenge was something no one talked about. Apparently they'd hit the ruins of a Wal-Mart and had returned with hundreds of pieces of slightly moldy clothing that people had used as pillows and makeshift blankets. I could see some of that clothing being hung out to dry on the edges of the buildings I had made. I wasn't sure how they'd figured out how to hold them up.

The scavenging had apparently cemented their position in the community as people who could get things done, and I could see that most of them were walking taller and acting prouder than I'd ever seen them. The Dockworkers had been something of a joke in the Bay for a long time.

Why have dockworkers if ships can't even get to the docks?

I glanced at the list and then I glanced again. There were at least twenty kids missing, and I recognized at least half the names. The ones I knew were all from Winslow.

Snatching my cellphone out of thin air, I dialed Tattletale.

"Yes, oh Lord and Master of the Seas, Potentate of Power, starter of wars and ender of warlords, how may I serve your bidding?"

"You know I'm capable of engineering an itch that won't go away," I said. "Something in a hard to reach place and incurable by modern medical science."

"Ouch," she said. "I'd ask what side of the bed you got up on, but I hear you don't sleep anymore."

"Sleep's overrated," I said. "I'm just glad that I wasn't ever a coffee drinker before. I'm immune to it now."

"The world would have already ended if it had been Armsmaster," Tattletale said. "He actually designed a way to have his armor inject caffeine directly into his veins before oversight shut it down."

"Tell him I can fix him so he doesn't have to sleep if he doesn't want to," I said. "There's a certain chance of psychosis involved, but it might be worth it to him."

"I'll be sure to tell him," she said, in a tone of voice that told me she almost certainly wouldn't. "What do you need from me, oh great Master?"

"Take a look at this list," I said, snapping a quick picture and sending it to her. "It's a group of kids missing from the camps overnight. At least half these kids I recognize from Winslow."

"You want me to see if there is a trend," she said. "Put me on speaker with whoever you're talking with."

I didn't even ask how she'd guessed. I simply tapped on the screen a couple of times. Using cell phones was getting easier. I hardly ever thought about my mother's death when using them now.

"Did anyone see what happened?" her tinny voice came over the phone's speaker.

Glancing at me, Bruno nodded.

I gestured and he said, "Yeah, nobody knew a thing until the morning. It was pretty dark in the camps last night. The skylight tubes she made helped a little, but we didn't even have lights from the city. It was mostly from the moon and stars and most of us could barely see out hands in front of our faces. A few people had trashfires they were gathered around, but those went out after midnight.

I needed to provide lights

"Nobody screamed or cried out?"

"Nobody heard a thing," he said. "Some people think they were sneaking out for a little nookie, but nobody knows why they aren't back yet. The parents are pretty upset."

"I'm sure," Tattletale murmured. I could hear the sounds of her keyboard tapping in the background as she hummed under her breath. "It's all right to take it off speaker now."

I took that to mean something. I used the winds to muffle what I was saying from Bruno. While I trusted the Dockworkers the last thing I wanted to do was to create a panic because I'd been overheard by someone standing five feet away.

"School computers were destroyed," she said, "But there is a certain amount of information on the cloud. Accessing social media from the teenagers on the list, correlating it with locations of pictures...it looks like every student there went to Winslow."

I scowled. "That seems a little much to be a coincidence."

"It's not," she said. "I've accessed the records of Emma Barnes and Sophia Hess's texts that were taken during the PRT investigation. Eighty percent of the students on this list correlate with some of those texts as either people who were bullied or people who'd crossed one of them or the other."

Staring at my phone I resisted the impulse to crush it into powder. "You think it's her?"

"She seems to have kept a darkness theme to her abilities," Tattletale said. "She's one of the few parahumans left in town. She was able to make Emma Barnes mostly disappear without being seen by girls who weren't that far away."

Mostly disappear only because she'd left souvenirs behind.

"Hess seemed like the kind to hold onto grudges, even if we can't really get an idea of her mental state, other than her habit of going Van Gogh on people she no longer likes."

"You think she's leave trophies?" I asked.

"I think she'll take trophies," Tattletale said. "Whether she'll leave any I'm not sure. It depends on why she is doing this. If she's just out to settle old scores she might leave trophies to taunt people. Her power might need deaths to get stronger, though."

"You'd think she'd have killed other people then," I said. "Maybe a lot of people."

"Maybe whatever she does takes more time than that little pocket monster you've got now."

How she knew about the little creature I'd gotten from the Moord Nag I had no idea. It had found a tiny mouse skull from somewhere and was wearing it in an attempt to look intimidating. I found it adorable, which made me wonder if my definition of adorable was different than that of other people.

"I'll need help finding her," I said. "I wouldn't be surprised if she moved on from the kids to other people who are important to me."

I glanced at Bruno, who was staring at me. His heart rate hadn't sped up, so using the winds to muffle what I was saying was working.

"It's not going to be easy," Tattletale said. "She's still a stranger, and she may have ways of slipping out of this universe."

I'd have to check the mirror universe, I realized. If Sophia had triggered and it had give her powers even tangentially related to the ones I'd collected, she'd be able to hide in the mirror universe as easily as I always had.

"Do what you can," I said. I clicked the phone off and vanished it to my own personal pocket dimension.

Bruno was still staring at me. I dismissed the winds and said, "What?"

"You seem so normal sometimes," he said. "Like Danny's little girl, and then you just do things and everybody remembers that you aren't."

The fact that he was comfortable enough to say things like this to someone who had the power I had was undoubtedly why he'd been chosen for the position. Still, it irritated me.

Before I could say anything I felt two approaching presences. While my sense of where people were through my water sense was enough that I could sense all thirty thousand five hundred and twelve people in the camp at the moment, only two of them were in the air at the moment.

Dragon's suits had very little biological matter inside, unless she was some kind of Case 54 who didn't use water in her biology. Bonesaw's powers told me that from the limited date I had about the water content of her suits it was likely a biological computer.

The fact that this made me itch to crack her armor open and examine the inside wasn't something I was sharing with anyone.

I heard Panacea muttering grumpily to Glory Girl, even though I couldn't see them yet. The buildings I had made were obscuring the view. Panacea had been doing good work since early in the morning, protected by a troop of PRT guards who hadn't really been necessary.

The smell of MREs cooking using their own pre-provided chemical packs was already wafting over the camp. People had been grateful for the seafood I'd provided yesterday, but having actual pasta and bread and rice was something people were grateful for. I heard hardly anyone complaining.

"Hey Taylor!" Glory Girl said, flying toward me. I felt her aura as she approached, although with a certain kind of detachment. It didn't affect me at all the way it had before, probably because I no longer had a remotely human brain. It was a relief from my fears about being Mastered, although it was still possible that Masters didn't all use the same methods. It might be that only some Masters could affect me, so I couldn't afford to get cocky.

"I can't believe you got all this done overnight," she said as she landed, setting Panacea down. Apparently the PRT had decided she didn't need guards while she was beside me and Glory Girl, or they'd decided that there was nothing they'd be able to do in the short term if I got distracted.

She'd apparently got over whatever resentment she had over me completely ruining her life. Being accused of accidental murder was apparently less important than having your entire family murdered and having the threat of having your skull removed.

"I'm surprised you guys stuck around," I said. "Sylar is still around, from what I hear, although he's claiming to be kinder and less murderous."

"This is our city," Glory Girl said. "Our friends have had their homes damaged and people need us here. We wouldn't be heroes if we didn't stand up when we're needed."

"Plus the PRT asked us to make friends with you," Panacea said.

Glory Girl turned and stared at her.

"She's not stupid," Panacea said, shrugging. "It's not that we _don't_ want to make friends with you. I mean, I know that thing at the Market was an accident but I was pretty resentful for a time. I've been in therapy though and I've let it go for the most part."

"Amy holds onto grudges like Armsmaster holds onto his Halberd," Glory Girl said grimacing. "I try to live and let live."

I found myself liking them a little more for being honest, then wondered if they'd been advised to be honest by Protectorate thinkers who had profiled me.

Ignoring the issue had to be the best policy. If I started wondering who was plotting behind who I'd never get anywhere.

"Why are you guys here?" I asked.

"A lot of our friends went missing during the evacuations," Amy said. "That nuclear thing you were involved in especially. Lots of people were creeped out and were planning to leave, but they never showed up at their destinations. There's still cars in the driveways...the ones that haven't been washed away, and the neighbors who still are around haven't seen them at all."

"How many people are we talking about?" I asked.

"Including their families?" Glory Girl said. "About a hundred."

Part of me wanted to ask how that many people could have gone missing in that short of a time, but the evacuations had been chaotic and people had scattered to all parts of the country, most staying with out of town relatives.

"Most of your friends went to Arcadia, right?" I asked.

Glory Girl nodded.

"Did either of you know Sophia Hess?" I asked.

"Shad..." Glory Girl said, then glanced sharply at Panacea who had punched her in the arm.

"I know about her other identity," I said. "There's some evidence that she has kidnapped at least one of my classmates from Winslow, and it is possible that she may have attacked more people than that."

"I heard she was depowered though," Glory Girl said.

"She triggered again," I said. "Around me."

"Shit," Amy said. "That means that her powers may be related to yours, either your base power of some of those you have collected."

"There's a reason so many people in New Wave had similar powers," Amy said.

She didn't mention that the reason her powers were so different was because she was adopted. She didn't need to.

Or were the powers you got not genetic, but instead actually related to the nearest capes? If that was the case, shouldn't she have been a brute or a blaster?

"There's a chance that she might have been taking kids at this camp that she knew in school. Did she have much contact with Arcadia kids?"

"She was competitive and didn't like some of the guys and girls on the track team," Amy said. She frowned. "Actually, several of them are missing.

"None of the Wards noticed?" I asked.

"They've been busy," Glory Girl said shortly. She looked irritated and I wondered if it was something I'd said or it was something specific to the Wards. There had been rumors for years that she was cheating on her boyfriend Dean with one of the Wards, possibly Gallant.

"It's not like we officially know who the Wards are anyway," Amy said. "Although we can make some good guesses."

"If it really is Sophia, there's a good chance she'll attack again," I said. "Possibly as early as tonight."

"I'm in," Glory Girl said.

"What?" I asked.

"You're going to stake this place out tonight and try to catch whoever did it red handed," Glory Girl said. "I want to be here to help."

I stared at her for a moment, considering. The thought that someone like her could help someone like me in battle as anything other than a distraction was ridiculous. However, it was possible that not all of the hostages were dead, in which case it would be good to have more than the Siberian and my clones to help protect people.

"I'm not going," Panacea said. "I'm not exactly ready for frontline fights. I'm willing to wait nearby in case anyone needs any healing...more than what you can provide anyway."

I sighed and nodded. I'd been spending a lot of time alone since I'd gained Leviathan's powers and maybe a stakeout with someone my own age might be helpful.

Of course, Glory Girl had always struck me as the kind of girl who was more interested in boys and clothes than in anything of consequence, so I had to wonder how much we really had in common.

"Oh, and thanks for not eating me," Panacea said.

I stared at her and she started to blush. "I mean not stealing my powers."

"Turns out Panacea likes the ladies," Glory Girl said. "I don't understand it myself, but at least now I can try to stop setting her up with every Tom, Dick and parahuman I can find."

Panacea wasn't looking at me now, which was kind of amusing.

"Don't suppose you swing that way?" Glory Girl asked.

Panacea's head snapped up and she shoved Glory Girl, who was grinning at her. Part of me wondered if they were being this way to disarm me. Had the Protectorate thinkers decided that I liked this kind of interaction because it would remind me of the days when Emma had been my best friend?

"I only date Endbringers," I said, my face deadpan.

Both of them froze, staring at me.

"What, you don't think Behemoth would be a good date?" I asked. "I mean, you'd have to get an outdoor cafe since he couldn't fit through any doors and he doesn't exactly eat anything other than cities...I guess you could take him to the drive in theater if the other patrons screaming and driving away didn't ruin the movie."

"I'd think the spikes would be a turnoff," Panacea said slowly. "Plus all the radiation."

"You'd be surprised what a girl could do with a guy with spikes," Glory Girl said grinning. "It's just another sign that you don't have any taste."

Maybe the stakeout wouldn't be as bad as I thought.


	65. Vines

This is kind of nice," Glory Girl murmured.

We were sitting on top of one of the buildings I had made munching popcorn and staring at the screen in front of us.

I spent much of the day doing things to make the camp a more livable place. I helped wire more electrical connections. I swam to Boston and bought ten projectors designed for drive in movie theaters. Those had been making a comeback across the country, and there had been a warehouse in Boston. The thirty foot inflatable screens had been more expensive; all told I'd spent three hundred thousand dollars.

The videos for the screens had been provided for free by companies apparently wanting my goodwill.

Kid Win had managed to rig up some batteries using the limited lab equipment he'd managed to put together and I'd hooked the screens up in different parts of the camp. It wasn't going to be enough for everyone to watch, but my guess was that not everyone was going to be in the mood.

It was amazing how quickly people recovered. I could see children chasing each other as people lay out on the grass on top of government issues blankets eating popcorn that had also been provided for free by a company out of Boston.

As much as I was getting free it was amazing how stingy the projector people had been.

"It's a good movie," I admitted, although there were elements of the movie that made me uncomfortable.

It was a movie about a boy wizard from Earth Aleph, who was engaged in a war. It was something I could understand, because all the pictures I'd drawn had told me that was exactly where I was headed. People were going to die if I didn't change something, but from what Tattletale was telling me the world would end in two years or possibly less, and part of it was because of things I had already done.

"Yeah, but I mean this," she said. "No fighting, no people dying, just being outside under the stars. The sky looked like this in Canada."

"You don't normally see the stars in the city," I admitted. "Too many lights. I guess there's always some small silver lining."

The city down below was still mostly dark. People in the richer, less affected neighborhoods had solar power during the day because of the roads I'd made, but by night they were limited to generator power, and most people didn't have generators. There were little pockets of light surrounded by vast swathes of darkness.

It was still too early in the season for there to be a lot of bugs and although some people had brought their pets into the Endbringer Shelters there weren't that many, all things considering.

It probably would have been better had there been a few more dogs. I'd asked around and there were at least three hundred kids from Winslow in the camps at the moment. Many of the ones who had not been chosen were in shelters that had pets.

It suggested to me that whether it was Sophia or another predator, they'd chosen shelters that had people who weren't likely to be wakened by an animal with superior senses.

"Are you going to be all right staying up all night?" I asked. "I don't need to sleep or eat anymore, so it's a little hard to judge what people need."

Considering that I'd needed to eat and sleep not so long ago, it shouldn't have been difficult, but I tended to forget if I got involved in other things.

"You control all that?" she asked, staring at me. "No runny noses or menstrual cramps or periods or anything?"

"I can pretend to have those things," I said. "But I'm not really fully biological anymore. My body is more like a puppet being manipulated by whatever my brain has turned into."

"But you can still feel, right?"

"I can still feel," I said.

Although my body was a puppet it still counted as part of me for extending my power. I could feel Glory Girl's power every time I brushed her hand grabbing for the popcorn.

I didn't have to eat, but I could still enjoy the taste of popcorn and the bittersweet memories it brought of going to the movies with Emma.

"So I won't get any kind of Endbringer cooties eating after you?" she asked.

"You should have asked before we started sharing a bucket, " I grinned. "You won't start growing gills right away but you might start smelling a little fishy."

"Well, I've got Amy to fix any horrible thing you do to me, so I figure I'm all right."

I heard the sound of someone from below trying to shush us before they realized who we were. I shifted the winds to carry our voices up and away into the sky, making us almost inaudible to the people around us.

"Odds are I'm going to have to kill Sophia," I said. "From what I've heard, her power isn't the kind I'm going to want to take for myself. Are you all right with that?"

"She was always a bitch," Glory Girl said. "But kidnapping or maybe even killing my friends and their families over a track trophy? I'll hold her down if you need me to."

Apparently she was over whatever trauma she'd had from accidentally killing a guy... or at least she thought she was.

"She probably won't attack until after everyone goes to bed and it gets dark," I said. "I can sense the water in everyone's body in the entire camp, and I can hear most of the camp if I want to."

"Even people going to the bathroom?" she asked.

"There are two hundred people having sex in the camp right now," I said. "Probably because the kids are watching the movies and this is the first privacy they've had."

She made a face.

"It doesn't gross you out?"

I shrugged. "It's not like I'm watching them. I can just sense where their bodies are in relation to each other, and I can hear what a lot of them are doing... all right, yeah it's a little gross. But hearing everyone fart in a three block radius isn't exactly any picnic either. You get used to it after a while though."

"You must be a real hoot at sleepovers," Glory Girl said.

"I've never been to one with more than one other person," I said. At her look I shrugged. "I had one good friend and I really didn't need anybody else. It worked great until she turned against me, and after that I didn't have a lot of opportunities. Now... I doubt anybody would be comfortable having a sleepover with me."

"Considering that you can't sleep and would be listening to everyone going to the bathroom and gossiping about you, plus could destroy the whole house if someone was cheating with your boyfriend."

"Do you think the Endbringers were involved?" I asked suddenly. "I mean wherever they were before they came here?"

Glory Girl looked shocked. "You mean the Simurgh and Behemoth?"

"Or Leviathan," I said. "or both."

"They don't have any... parts," Glory Girl said.

"That you know of," I said. She looked at me incredulously. "I can grow any part I want and maybe they just have covers for their parts or have them in weird places."

"The Simurgh would make the greatest cheater in the world," Glory Girl said thoughtfully. "She could tell whether she was going to get caught before it even happened and then change it."

"You think Behemoth ever got jealous of Leviathan?" I asked, grinning.

Most people avoided the subject of Endbringers like the plague. It was a superstition, like talking about them might bring them down on the speaker. It was a little like the movie we were watching actually, with a villain people were afraid to name.

The conversation degenerated after that. Why I'd thought Victoria Dallon was going to be boring I didn't know. She actually had a sense of humor which was more than I could say about most of the adult capes I knew. The fact that she was surprisingly bawdy was pleasantly surprising.

The movies ended, and I watched silently as darkness descended on the camp. Solar powered lanterns had been brought, presumably because the government hadn't known about my solar roads when the order had been made. They were capable of variable colors, with some hues lasting as long as eleven hours and white lasting as little as three.

Most of the lanterns out there cast a red or blue hue over things because those were the power conservation modes, although I saw a few wasteful yellows and whites.

One by one, though, the lanterns switched off. I could sense people everywhere moving restlessly, but over time they began to grow still, and it got quiet.

There were still people moving around, of course. In a group of over thirty thousand there were always people heading for the bathroom or out for a smoke. But an hour after the movies ended there were less than a hundred people who seemed like they were awake, scattered throughout the camp.

Victoria snoozed despite her claims that she'd taken a nap and would be fine. It didn't matter though. The solitude reminded me a little of the peace and tranquility of the ocean. I sometimes found myself longing for it when people crowded me too much. I mostly avoided that feeling by keeping myself busy, but there was less to do once people were all asleep.

I pulled out my PRT issued laptop and set to work. There was freeware to change the brightness of the screen, which I used to dim it to a point where most people wouldn't have been able to see much even in the darkness of the night.

It didn't matter. I was able to modify my eyes even better than I had before with Bonesaw's powers, better than a cat's vision. It meant that I could work at the top of a roof without standing out like a beacon to the whole camp.

Working on tinker designs while I waited was the best use of my time. Between my water sense and my hearing I didn't need to be looking or even paying that much attention. Leviathan hadn't even used his eyes at all.

Another hour passed, with even the last hundred people mostly settling down. In a world where cell phones didn't work and there were no televisions, people settled down pretty quickly after dark.

I stiffened as midnight approached and reached out and grabbed Victoria's leg.

She jerked awake and stared at me.

Carefully I closed my laptop and sent it away. I nodded to her quietly and we both levitated off the roof hand in hand because Victoria looked as though she couldn't see much. It looked as bright as daylight to me simply from the starshine.

I'd had the men make a list of all the shelters that held Winslow kids. A lot of them were in the southeast corner of the camp, away from the convenience of the solar roads and chargers. Their part of the camp had fewer lanterns and were a farther walk from the FEMA dropoff points.

I didn't approve of how the camp was already segregating itself, but the Dockworkers told me it couldn't be helped. People tended to congregate around people similar to themselves and they tended to ostracize those who were different. Forcing them together would just cause strife whenever I wasn't around, causing more trouble for those trying to keep the peace.

Approaching the edge of the camp I let go of Glory Girl's hand. I could feel a nonhuman shape inside one of the shelters, one that had enough water in it to be detectable by me but that seemed strange.

Before I could reach the door, though the figure disappeared from my senses, as did the former inhabitants of the place.

She'd jumped worlds!

I grabbed Glory Girl and shifted into the mirror dimension.

Something was wrong. Slipping into this dimension wasn't the smooth translation it had been when I created my own pockets; this dimension had been created by someone else, someone who had more control over it than I had with my mirror dimensions.

It was as dark as it had been at home, but here the buildings in the camp looked dilapidated, as though they'd been here for years instead of just last night. The metal of the walls were covered in rust and mold and some of the ceilings had fallen in.

I could hear the sound of skittering in the darkness, but I couldn't pinpoint exactly where it was coming from.

Blood red vines were covering the ground, radiating from the city, which was as dark as in reality but seemed much more foreboding. Had I had ordinary vision they would have looked black in the darkness, but my enhancements allowed me to see grayish versions of normal colors.

The stars seemed wrong somehow, although I wasn't able to put my finger on it.

It was unnaturally quiet, without the sounds of more than thirty thousand people breathing quietly and moving quietly as they shifted in their sleep. Since I'd gained my enhanced hearing I'd never heard anything this quiet.

"Where did they go?" Glory Girl asked quietly.

They should have still been in the area once they'd come here, but I didn't sense them. My senses in general were occluded. It was as though a film was covering everything. I could sense water in the direction of the city, but it was a blob; I couldn't sense individual shapes.

"Follow me," I said quietly to Glory Girl.

Levitating I headed for the city. I moved slowly so that Glory Girl wouldn't lose me in the darkness and also because I was reaching out with my senses trying to understand what seemed so wrong about this place.

It was much larger than the mirror universes I created, which were usually only big enough to cover a few city blocks in each direction. This covered an area at least as large as the entire city plus the refugee camp. I couldn't tell if the area outside was an illusion like in my mirror universes, or if this universe was that much larger.

As we flew over the ruins of houses and streets I noticed that some of the improvements I had made over the past few days were not reflected in this version of reality. There were no solar towers and no solar roads. The ships were still in the ship graveyard.

Yet the encampment had the buildings I had constructed. Did that mean that this world had been constructed piece by piece, added to one part at a time? Is this what Sophia had been doing, recreating a world where she was the only person alive?

We were halfway to our destination when I realized where the mass was; it was in the spot where Winslow had once stood. In the real world Winslow had been completely demolished by the tsunami. Here it still stood, grim and foreboding as ever.

I felt a strange sense of trepidation. The flesh I was sensing was underneath Winslow, although some of it was in the school itself.

"That's your old school?" Glory Girl asked.

"Home sweet hell," I said.

"Do you think she knows we're here?" Glory Girl asked.

I could feel movement from the mass under the school. It was huge, almost as large as the school itself. I still couldn't get an accurate read on what it was; it seemed to shift and change the moment that I started to understand.

"Let's go," I said.

There were actual lights on inside Winslow, although they were dim and glowed red. They flickered on and off, giving everything a hellish hue.

Walking into the main hallway was like stepping back in time, except that the strange red vines snaked everywhere here too. I felt strange, almost like I was the version of myself from before I triggered, just waiting for the next horror that was going to be foisted on me by the Trio and the others.

My powers were all still available; it was the psychological effect of being back here that was still bothering me.

Moving through the hallways I noticed that the vines were growing thicker and some of them were actually pulsing with a rhythm that felt strangely familiar. It took me a moment to realize that it was the rhythm of a heartbeat.

I squatted down and touched one of the vine. It had an oily feeling, and I felt a distant echo of power, although not enough that I could get a firm grasp on it. The vines were all part of a larger organism, which gave me an uneasy feeling that I knew what was underneath the school.

The vines were all leading in one direction. I nodded to Glory Girl and we both floated two feet above the floor. Walking on the vines seemed like a vaguely bad idea.

Opening the door to the cafeteria, I froze.

The floor of the cafeteria was gone, and in its place was a roiling mass of blackness, with faces appearing inside and straining against whatever was holding them, with expressions of agony and madness.

Some of them spotted us, and their hands stretched the membrane containing them, grasping desperately toward us before they were pulled back inside the roiling mass.

The mass itself formed into a shape made out of blackness, a head the side of a large desk. It showed Sophia's face. She stared at me without a hint of recognition at first, but then there was a spark. Her face twisted with anger and rage and I heard a rumbling in the ground below us.

Using my ability nullifying aura didn't seem to make much of a difference. Apparently I'd have to get close to whatever core she had to be able to reverse her power.

The walls of Winslow began to tremble, and moments later everything began to collapse all around us.


	66. Justice

The world slowed around me, but Sophia was already moving, ducking back underneath the floor. I flew forward, my mind racing.

A lot of my powers were too dangerous to use while she still had seemingly real people inside of her; and now that I was close I could feel at least a hundred people in desperate fear beneath me. Whatever she was doing to dim my senses was still working.

My fire aura would burn the people to a crisp; Kaiser's iron spears would spear through heads and bodies as easily as through Sophia's protoplasm. Although I might be able to use it to make iron walls to hem her in.

She was large enough that Stormtiger's winds wouldn't do much and Shatterbird's glass shards would either not do enough or they'd do too much.

The Siberian could cut through her flesh, but I could do that just as well. Despite all of this I doubted that Sophia could really hurt me.

If I could get close enough to her core with Hatchetface's power, it was possible that the entire construct would fall apart, releasing everyone. It was also possible that they'd all drown in her effluvium.

Scowling I dove into the hole left behind. Glory Girl was behind me, still not having reacted all all, probably because her reaction speed wasn't fast enough. Both Sophia and I were moving at speeds normal people couldn't match.

The tunnel was deeper than I expected, and so dark that I couldn't see anything even with my enhanced vision. I had to depend on my water sense and my hearing, which somehow bothered me less than I would have thought.

The bottom of the ocean had been this dark and I'd barely even noticed. Now that I was here I could sense that the tunnels were vast, spreading out far beyond anything I could have imagined; possibly all over the city.

She couldn't have thought that I would lose her though; I could smell her scent easily, and with Leviathan's power I was faster than any speedster while in the water. Even out of the water I was lightning quick.

I was getting closer and strategies rushed through my head. Fog's power would be ideal if she still had lungs; from the glimpse I'd had that wasn't entirely a sure thing.

Pulling the water from her body would be great, but Leviathan's power, as strong as it could be was Manton limited. Besides, with whatever she was using confusing my senses I might pull water from victims instead of her.

I sensed her now, the black end of an amorphous blob pulling away into a massive cavern. I had her, although I wasn't sure what I was going to do with her.

As I came to the entrance of the cavern I froze. There were phosphorescent algae here, which to my enhanced vision was almost as good as daylight. I could see her, and what I saw horrified me.

She was bigger than I would have thought. Stretching a hundred feet in all directions her body was an amorphous blob at the bottom of the cavern, with red tendrils stretching out in all directions. Those had to be how she was reaching out, and I wondered if she was able to reach into the other dimension while remaining here.

My ghosts began to form around me. They should be able to tear into Sophia just fine. The Siberian appeared next to me.

"Give it up Sophia," I called out. "I'm too powerful for you to even think about fighting."

A face appeared in the protoplasm; I could tell it wasn't even her original body, assuming she still had once.

" **You ruined my life** ," she said, her voice sounding like a chorus of voices in pain. " **Took everything from me."**

"You did it to yourself," I said. "If you'd acted like a human being you'd still be in the Wards kicking butt and taking names. Instead you're down here playing in the dark."

" **You sent me to prison, took my family, took my friends,"** she said.

"You didn't have any friends," I said, "Not really. You saw how fast Emma dropped you once you weren't the cool Cape?"

I wondered if Emma was dead already. If she wasn't she was part of that mass and had been for weeks. Even after everything she'd done to me I wouldn't have wanted that for her.

She roared in anger. A pseudopod lashed out at me, and as it slammed into me I ignored it.

"You can't hurt me," I said. "I've got Leviathan's powers now, and a lot more. You should have killed me when you had the chance. You're the weak one now."

It felt good to taunt her. She'd had so much power over me for so long, and I was now the one with the upper hand. She had always preyed on the weak, despised them, and once I'd been the very picture of that as far as she was concerned.

Nobody could call me weak now.

She roared and the entire cavern trembled. Sand and dust drifted around all around us. I didn't care.

" **People have hurt Endbringers before!** "

"They were pretending, so that people wouldn't stop fighting when they realized how overmatched they are." I said. I was silent for a moment. "I'll give you one chance to let these people go. The PRT has thinkers and tinkers who might be able to help you have a normal life again."

I was lying of course; other than someone like myself there was probably no hope for her to ever return to normal and she knew it; her roar told me as much. Even had I been willing to take on the burden of whatever horror her body had now become, I wouldn't. She was a monster on the outside now just as she'd once been a monster on the inside. It seemed fitting somehow.

I wondered if she was horrified by what she'd become or if she was so far gone that she didn't care. The fact that she'd been willing to cut off Emma's ears removed any sympathy I might have had for her. Emma might have tormented me for years, but she'd been my friend once. Her looks had been the one thing she'd been proud of.

Before I could do anything Glory Girl was at the entrance to the cave. "You left me."

"She was getting away," I said impatiently. "I'm going to try pulling people out of her and I want you to protect them when I do."

Before she said anything I exploded into motion, pushing off the cavern wall behind me and exploding down toward her. I could see her reacting defensively, moving bodies to positions where I would crush them as I passed through.

I shadowed through them, enjoying the irony that I was using her own power to defeat her. Slipping inside her was like moving through mud, but I could feel her power getting closer through her tendrils. I had no intention of taking it, but it was a roadmap for me to kill her.

She'd probably expected me to do what I'd just said to Glory Girl, try to rescue the hostages, but as long as she lived the hostages were in danger, and with as many of them as there were there was no way I could protect them all. I was better off ending Sophia, and then the rest would follow naturally.

It was pitch black inside of her, but I was close enough now that my water senses could make out a version of the faces of those trapped inside. All of them would need extensive therapy, assuming they weren't somehow inextricably bound to Sophia and would die without her.

Bonesaw's power was very interested in what exact method was being used to keep them alive. Were there umbilical cords that I wasn't seeing or was the fluid they were suspended in somehow oxygenated?

It didn't matter. Even though it was taking a lot longer to get through the mass of her body than I'd thought, I was getting there. It was inevitable as the sun rising that I was going to find whatever remained of Sophia and I was going to end her.

I was blasted by a beam of light that actually caused me pain even though I was insubstantial. It took me a moment to realize that I could see now. In the darkness there was a single glowing figure, one that looked oddly familiar.

Purity.

I knew I'd forgotten a Cape of two as I'd taken the Capes of the bay. She'd been keeping a low profile since I'd appeared and so I'd essentially gotten distracted, which was bad since her power was probably the one I would want more than any of the others in the Bay.

Before I could react a body was thrust in front of me.

Emma.

She stared at me, her face contorted into a rictus of horror. I was shocked and I involuntarily returned to my normal solid state.

" **I take on the power of anything inside me,"** Sophia's voice whispered in my ear. " **That includes you**."

I suddenly found myself struck in the side with a force beyond anything I'd felt in a long time, strong enough to actually hurt. Purity's beams struck me as well, and they hurt, but much less than the thing that had hit me.

Was this what it was like to be hit by Leviathan's strength when you were Leviathan yourself?

I lashed out at the goop in between bodies, but it had the consistency of thick mud. Even worse, it tightened suddenly and it felt like I was hitting a wall, before I'd had powers. This was something beyond Leviathan's toughness.

Glory Girl's familiar form floated by me, heading for the center. Was her power strong enough to take a hit from Leviathan? Apparently Sophia could multitask as well as I could.

Ghostly figures appeared before me, looking like what Sophia had once, except that their eyes were cold and dead. They started tearing away at me even as I was surrounded by hundreds of arms and hands. I could tear through them easily, but if I did I'd kill dozens or even more innocent people.

Purity's beams lashed out twice, missing my face but stinging my ears. I grimaced. If Sophia was stealing my powers because I was inside her, I simply had to not be inside her.

I tried to shift to the real universe, but nothing happened. Purity had burned the mirrored earrings off my ears! Even though my ears were fine, the earrings that gave me easy access to the real world were gone.

" **I'd have had your father in here,"** Sophia muttered in my ears. " **Shown him just what a failure you are**."

I switched back to shadow form and slipped through the cordon of bodies surrounding me. I was actually more vulnerable to Purity's beams like this than I was in the real world, but it didn't matter.

Exploding toward her, I reached out and at the last moment I turned real. Her power exploded in my face, enough to sting and burn away the top layers of my skin, but not enough to stop me, and a moment later I had a hand on her wrist.

Purity was a Nazi, but I still felt sorry for her. I'd wanted her power for a long time and this would help me get justice for everyone Sophia had hurt. I'd vaguely heard that she was trying to turn her life around, but I wasn't sure if that made up for years of persecuting people as a Nazi. I was also fuzzy about the timeline. Had she only turned a new leaf once I'd come along?

Redemption through fear wasn't real redemption.

Swimming was harder now as I approached what felt like Sophia's core, but I had Leviathan's power, and swimming was what he did better than anyone. I shadowed again. She hadn't copied my power until I'd left my shadow state, probably because when I was using that power I wasn't really completely in the universe.

Emma appeared before me again. Her eyes showed no recognition of me, only an unsettling kind of madness. Her hair was string and there were massive holes where her ears had once been. I was seeing this with my water sense and I was glad. Seeing it with my eyes would have been so much worse.

Still, if Sophia thought this was going to be enough to stop me she was sorely mistaken. Emma had betrayed me, and the sympathy I might have for her because of what we'd once had wasn't enough to keep me from saving more than a hundred other people, including Glory Girl. Glory Girl had every reason to hate me, but she'd forgiven me and had been the closest thing I'd had to a friend since I'd gotten these power other than her cousin.

It was a little sad really. My powers had isolated me in a way I hadn't considered. I'd been alone so long because of Sophia and Emma that it had seemed normal to be alone. Now, though, there would always be a divide between me and other people. I wondered if Alexandria and Eidolon had ever felt this way.

Suddenly the black goop around me dissolved away and I fell, catching myself with Purity's power. I wasn't sure why Sophia would wive up the tactical advantage of having my powers, but I wasn't going to let her live to regret the mistake.

I froze as I realized that there were tendrils reaching inside of all the people around me, and those people were now screaming in pain. Emma in particular was convulsing as though she was in a seizure. Now that I could see her with my eyes I realized she looked even worse than I had thought.

" **Kill me and they die too** ," Sophia said. " **They feel any pain I feel.** "

"Of course they do," I muttered. My mind raced, and then I froze. There was a power that I hadn't tried yet, one that might let us get through this without any more death or bloodshed.

I opened my mouth and I began to sing.

" _You've tried your best_ " I began. " _Fought the fight, but it's time to rest_."

The seizurelike motion the crowd of more than a hundred were making slowed. People grew still and silently their heads began to turn in my direction. It was a little unnerving really, but it was working. All the screaming bodies were slowing down and growing calm. I still couldn't tell which one was Sophia's, but they were listening, more than a hundred of them.

I had no doubt that she was somewhere in the center. Even though she was overconfident, she wasn't stupid.

" _You wanted to be a hero_ ," I said, and as I did my entire body began to glow with Purity's light. " _And this does not become you. You are better than this you know; let these people go."_

I was terrible as a songwriter, although Canary's power made my voice sound pure and amazing, and the influence it held glossed over any problems in my songwriting skills.

I couldn't really justify draining a songwriter just because I was embarrassed to be singing doggerel. Were there such things as criminal songwriters?

Liquid began to drain away from bodies. Canary's power was amazingly powerful. There was a reason the PRT had declared her a Master 8.

I needed to think about doing more things like this than always simply bulldozing forth. Simply because I had the best brute power in the world didn't mean that I had to act like a brute. Subtlety sometimes was better than pure force.

She was still connected to them by the tendrils though.

" _Let them go, let them go_ ," I sang, " _Can't hold them anymore_. _Let them go and you will be free_."

Tendrils began to drop away, and people began to drop to the floor.

One after the other they dropped, not convulsing, but not conscious either. Only Purity and Glory Girl seemed to retain any modicum of consciousness.

Finally only Sophia was left standing in the center of a crowd of people. These were people she'd terrorized, people she'd done horrible things to. Yet she was helpless. I'd said I was going to kill her, but was that the right thing?

Could she even be held by law enforcement? At best she might be sent to the Birdcage, which was a fate worse than death as far as most people were concerned. Yet if I killed her would I always wonder if I'd done it as revenge for what she'd done to me for all those years?

Was a mercy killing really justified if you hated the person you were killing?

Before I could make up my mind I realized that Glory Girl was behind Sophia.

There was a sharp crack that echoes through the cavern as Sophia's neck snapped, Glory Girl's hands around her neck. I felt a sudden pain deep in my bones as the world collapsed around us, leaving us in the real world.

She looked up at me as Sophia fell to the ground. Her eyes were hard and cold.

"Justice is served. Isn't that what you always say?"

With that she collapsed like everyone else, falling to the floor and leaving me the only one conscious in a massive group of people. The tunnels Sophia had made in the mirror universe didn't exist here. I could get out easily enough, but it would take take.

Was I turning the people around me cold? Glory Girl had once fallen into a depression for weeks because she'd only thought she'd murdered someone. Now she actually had.


	67. Portal

"You don't know what it was like in there," Glory Girl said quietly. She shuddered, her expression one of disgust and horror. "And I was just in there for a minute. I can't imagine what it had to be like for them."

Two thirds of Sophia's victims were making a recovery, although those who had apparently been with her the longest were not. They were laying catatonic, apparently overwhelmed by the horror of what they'd been through.

Looking out at them, Glory Girl said "I've got friends here that I've known since Elementary school, people that knew me before I was Glory Girl. These people were my friends.. are my friends. The thought that she'd had them here for days or even longer... I can't imagine what it was like."

I could, if barely. I'd spent a few hours in a locker, and I was unconscious throughout much of it. Being trapped in the darkness had been more than I could bear, especially the thought that no one cared about me enough to even tell a teacher.

These people had endured something even worse.

"She was crazy," Glory Girl said. "Hate and rage was all she had left. We could hear her in the backs of our minds, whispering crazy things. I'm not sure she realized that we could hear her."

Being trapped listening to Sophia would have been even worse than simply being trapped.

"I'm glad I killed her," Glory Girl said under her breath. I doubt she realized that I heard her. She'd wrapped her arms around herself as though she was cold. Maybe she was; I was no longer the best judge. Normal temperature variations barely registered with me any more in my new Endbringer body.

I only hoped that this didn't drive her back into the same kind of funk she'd been in after she'd killed the last man. The last thing I needed was any more guilt on my plate.

After all, I'd been the one on the phone when my mom had died. I was the one who'd threatened Leviathan until he escalated beyond his usual levels. I wondered how many of these people had lost homes that wouldn't have if I hadn't intervened.

Even worse, I was the one who'd triggered Sophia. I was responsible for all the pain these people were suffering. It was a lesson I needed to learn and soon. There were consequences to what I did, and the stronger I got the worse the consequences of making a mistake were.

I now had the power to create plagues that could wipe out mankind. I could make bombs that could wipe out half of large countries. Everything I did now mattered, and I had to keep that in mind.

Of course, obsessing over past mistakes wasn't constructive either. The more immediate concern was getting a hundred and forty people out of a cavern stuck in the earth with no exits.

Closing my eyes I sought out the pathways water took. They showed me where the surface was a thousand feet up. I could dig our way out easily enough, but there was a chance that the rock above us was unstable and the whole thing would collapse.

I could use water to slip us back into a mirror universe, but Sophia's had already collapsed.

"Move everyone back," I commanded, and people began dragging the catatonic away from the spot I was indicating.

I began digging, dirt spraying out behind me. Cutting through solid rock was surprisingly easy with Hookwolf's power, although I'd need a bath after this. It made be start thinking that I might be able to do something with Geothermal energy or in constructing underground shelters for people.

I'd been focused on taking care of people in the camps partially because I was hesitating about the next things I needed to do. Taking on Endbringers when you were the weakest wasn't the smartest thing. Yet if I was to defeat Scion I needed that kind of power.

Truthfully I suspected that Scion would be able to tear the Endbringers to pieces easily. I knew where the sleeping Endbringers were, but they'd be tough to get to with my current powers, so far under the earth that it might take weeks for me to get there.

The Simurgh would be easy to find, but she was the one Endbringer I was most reluctant to meet. If I became crazy there was every chance that I would start attacking the world, and unlike the other Endbringers I might never stop. I could trigger the collapse of civilization all by myself in less than a year if I went all out.

It would be easy for me to destroy all the coastal cities and then move up rivers. Most cities historically were located near water sources, which meant that I could use reservoirs to attack cities.

My digging reached the surface. I set the Siberian to widening the hole as I stood and stared at the rubble of Winslow. I tried to imagine going to Arcadia as I was now; would people even want to talk to a living Endbringer, and would I even want to talk to someone who did?

People were making the trek upward, some slipping, many crying out in happiness that they were finally free. The stronger among them were helping to drag the catatonics upward.

I pulled my PRT telephone out of my pocket dimension to call for medical assistance. I dialed Armsmaster.

"Where have you been?" he asked curtly.

"Dealing with Sophia and the hundred forty hostages she had," I said. "Many of whom now need medical attention. We're next to the ruins of Winslow High school."

""You need to come in right away," he said.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"The Simurgh is circling the Hawaiian islands," he said. "Far enough from them that no one has had to be quarantined yet, but close enough to be a definite threat."

Dad. Had she known he was there through whatever connection I had with her? Was this a threat directed toward me, or was this part of some other long term plan she was having.

"How long has she been there?" I asked.

"Five hours, just circling," he said grimly. "No one can decide what she's waiting for."

"Get ambulances here for forty catatonic people and probably half that number with smaller injuries, as well as transport for another eighty. I'll need Strider to transport me to Hawaii and get my dad out of there."

"Have you thought about this?" he asked.

"I'm going to have to fight her sooner or later," I said. "And the Endbringers are immune from precognition. If I'm lucky, that might make me immune to hers, at least partially. I've picked up Purity's powers, so I can fly pretty fast now."

"She can fly at orbital speeds," Armsmaster said. "Purity's top speed is clocked at two hundred fifty miles an hour."

I bit my lip. If I'd had my lab and time I'd have been able to create something to help me move faster. I was going to have to improvise.

"It doesn't matter," I said. "Either she'll want to fight me or she won't. If she doesn't she'll run, which is a victory for humanity."

He was quiet.

"I'll arrange it. An Endbringer fighting force is gathering in Oahu as we speak. I'll have your father brought there ready for transport."

"I don't suppose there are any Capes immune to the Simurgh's mental influence that I could take power from?"

"Alexandria is the only one we're aware of," he said. "Although Eidolon is able to make himself immune."

"Eidolon mastered the Endbringers into attacking the world," I said. "Most likely unconsciously. It's possible that he might be able to do the same thing consciously and stop all of this."

"Are you certain?" Armsmaster asked. "I'd heard rumors going around from something your father was claiming."

"I could feel it," I said. "I can still feel it in the back of my head urging me to kill everyone."

"Are you sure it's not just part of the Endbringer's nature?" he asked.

"No. It's from him," I said. "It's something we have to deal with and soon, or I'll deal with it, and I don't think anyone is going to like that, including me."

Gaining Eidolon's powers might be the ultimate solution to everything. It would give me the big powers I needed; the Thinker powers I was missing and the teleportation I'd need to get everywhere I planned to be.

It would, however turn the rest of the Triumvirate and possibly the entire Protectorate against me, which was something I didn't need.

"Noted," he said. "I'll try to inform them through channels, although I doubt he'll believe it."

"I'll make him believe it."

I clicked my phone closed and slipped it back into my pocket dimension. I turned to Glory Girl.

"The Simurgh is threatening Hawaii, which is where my Dad is. Can you take care of everyone?" I asked.

"Yeah," she said. "I already called Amy and she's getting some people together from the camp."

She hesitated. "Are you going to say anything?"

"About what?" I asked. At her look I said, "As far as I'm concerned everything that happened was fully justified, and I doubt anyone will tell you different."

I couldn't blame her for doing something that I would have done myself seconds later, even if I'd hesitated for a moment to do it in cold blood. Sophia had been a part of my life for a long time, and murdering her would have been another step toward my inevitable decline away from humanity.

A moment later I was gone, enjoying my ability to fly faster than anything I'd flown before, although it wouldn't be nearly enough according to Armsmaster. She had one of the strongest blaster abilities on the East Coast, second only to Legend, and she was stronger in the sunlight. I'd have to wait until daybreak to discover if that was true. Unfortunately, while it was two in the morning here it was only a little after 9 PM there, which meant they were even further from the break of dawn than we were.

Had the Simurgh planned it that way? Even if she couldn't directly precog me she could precog all the people I'd affect, which was almost as good.

If I was going to defeat Scion I needed her power. It bothered me a little that despite all that she'd done to the world, my lust for her power was a more important motivation than stopping what she was doing. Only the fact that she was threatening my Dad really registered emotionally.

Was this a sign I was becoming inhuman or was this something that everyone was experiencing after living in a world of horrors for so long. Were people unsympathetic after attacks because they were simply happy it hadn't been them?

I'd heard that charities in Aleph were more successful than they were here. I suspected it was because people were more anxious about their own safety and about the security of their families. That might make them more reluctant to give away money they might need at any time in the future.

Also the economy was worse here. It wasn't just Brockton Bay; Aleph's economy was more robust in every aspect than ours, possibly because of the impact of years of Endbringer attacks on both the economy and on people's confidence in the economy. People simply weren't as willing to spend money, which depressed things everywhere.

Still, I suspected that I would have cared more a few months ago. Being a hero tended to make you coarser as you experienced more and more horrors.

Reaching the hotel the Protectorate were staying at I tried to shift into the mirror universe so as not to alarm the staff. I grimaced as I realized that my earrings had been melted off my ears.

Flying to the roof instead I shadowed through it.

PRT troopers snapped to alert until they saw it was me. They looked impassive and professional although I heard their hearts beating in their chests like jackhammers.

"Take me to Armsmaster," I said curtly. One of them nodded and gestured for me to follow.

Dad needed me, and I needed to focus on what was in front of me. That was the only way I was going to get through.

I stepped forward only to have a sudden sensation of choice. There was a portal in front of me and I could choose to go through it or I could choose not to.

If this was an attack it was something I needed to deal with. If it wasn't, then I needed to see what it was all about. I chose to let the portal take me, and a moment later I was in a white room.

Alexandria and Legend were standing there, along with two women who were strangely familiar, even though I couldn't remember where I knew them from.

"Director," I said, nodding to Alexandria.

She froze. "What?"

"I'm embarrassed that it took me as long as it did to figure out who you were," I said. "There are all sorts of clues in body language, heart rate, lack of movement...I've had time to think about it and I realized that you had to be a parahuman."

"And you chose to reveal that in front of other people?" she asked, her tone chilly.

"I'm guessing these people already know," I said. "They don't look surprised at any rate. Besides, it's my understanding that the PRT is supposed to be run by normal people, not people like us."

"People like me, you mean," she said. "You and I aren't exactly the same."

I stared at her. Was she saying that she was better than me? From the perspective of having decades of experience she certainly was, but in terms of power she couldn't match me in anything other than flight speed. In a real fight I'd drain her before she had time to react.

"I'm not sure what you mean," I said.

"You didn't trigger," she said. "Not like most people. You had the capability, but we intervened."

My mind raced. "You are the people who give powers."

Alexandria gestured and a doorway appeared in the wall. On the other side was the remains of a wrecked locker, with open sky showing outside over the ruins of Winslow.

"You took me out then put me back and left me there?" I asked. I felt anger starting to grow within me. "I could have died."

I was exaggerating, probably, but the locker was still a sensitive subject.

"My name is Contessa," one of the women I didn't recognize said. "And I am the most powerful precog on Earth. We've spent the past few decades trying to save the world."

"From Scion, right? He's really a giant freaking space worm of some kind."

"How did you know that?" Contessa asked. She looked disconcerted, and somewhat surprised at herself.

I snatched pictures from my dimensional portal and threw them on the table in front of them. They stared down at them, turning white.

"I'm guessing you were the one who sent the painter to me," I said. "I've had plenty of time to use his power, and you can see what I got out of it."

"My power doesn't work on Endbringers or Scion," Contessa said. She was staring at the paintings. "But it does on everyone else. It tells me the exact steps I need to take to accomplish my goals. I don't always know why I'm having to do what I do, but I do them."

"And so shoving me back in the locker was necessary?" I couldn't help the anger in my voice. The locker had been torturous to me.

"What would have happened if we hadn't?"

"I'd have been assumed to be a parahuman," I admitted. "And the gangs would have come for me before I was ready."

"Or the PRT," Alexandria said. "And they'd have hardly given a power like yours free reign."

"You needed me to escalate," I said. "Why?"

Contessa gestured at the papers before her.

"I'm a little at a loss for words," she said. "Usually I know exactly what to say to convince someone of how genuinely important it is to listen to me."

"Can you open a portal to rescue my father?" I asked.

She got a faraway look in her eyes, then nodded. "I can transport him to anywhere on the planet you like, or even here, an extradimensional base that is probably safer than anywhere on the planet."

"But under your control and in a place I can't access, at least not without a lot of Tinkering or torturing."

"Our people are dedicated," she said sharply. "They know the price for failure. The entire world is going to end in less than two years, possibly much less and everyone of us are willing to give our lives."

"Or the lives of anyone else?"

She nodded. "Any cost is worth the survival of our species. If Scion destroys our planet, he won't just destroy Earth Bet. He'll destroy all the Earths, making us extinct in every universe in the multiverse."

I scowled at her.

"Get my Dad to safety and we can talk, at least until the Simurgh attacks. After that I'm going to try to take her."

"And if you do, what then?"

"I'll take the others," I said. "Try to gather as much power as possible before Scion decides to turn against us finally."

"We might have another idea," Contessa said. "Let us tell you what we know."


	68. Cauldron

I should have been disgusted.

Hundreds of people mutilated in an effort to create people with powers, with those who weren't successful locked away. Some were robbed of their memories, left as freaks in a world that would always look sideways at them.

It was cold and heartless, yet I could understand their logic.

Part of me even approved. Bonesaw's power had me itching to take a look at the Case 53's. There were probably some of them that I could depower and reverse the effects on my body, giving them back a normal life while making me more versatile if not actually more powerful.

The human cost was horrendous, but their logic was difficult to argue with. Causing misery for hundreds of even tens of thousands was a stain on the soul, but if it saved the lives of tens of trillions, wasn't it worth it?

I had to wonder how much my own greed was coloring my thought process. What they were offering was power to dwarf anything I'd experienced to this point, Leviathan included. They'd given powers to thousands of people, but what they were offering dwarfed even that. They were offering me everything they had.

It was possibly enough to save the world, but there was a price. Many of the Shards I'd taken so far had changed my personality, sometimes incrementally, sometimes in a more profound level. I had taken less than thirty Shards so far.

What would happen if I took thousands or tens of thousands? If I did this would what emerged even have a hint of the original Taylor Hebert?

People thought that a caterpillar became a butterfly, but in reality the caterpillar died and became food for an entirely new creature. What emerged from the Chrysalis had no relation to what had gone in. I was afraid that this was what was going to happen to me.

It was even possible that I might be the second Entity resurrected. Taking enough pieces of her original personality might have the effect of turning me into a carbon copy of her. If that happened, instead of saving the world I'd be ending it.

The worst part was that there was no way of knowing. Shard powers couldn't predict the Entities, a natural precaution so that the populations they were preying upon couldn't revolt against them. Most power limitations were there for a similar reason.

The reason their Capes were often the strongest was that the Entity who'd donated the Shards hadn't had a chance to limit them yet.

I'd toured the complex and seen the Case 53's. Privately I thought they could have done a better job with them; at least given them an empty world to spread out in, given them a modicum of a normal life until something could be done about them.

Just because they had to be created didn't mean they had to be treated inhumanely.

There was another branch to the complex, one create recently. It was a place for people who were gaining the other, newer kind of powers Cauldron had to offer. The results of this was usually much weaker than the other kind of powers Cauldron had to offer, but not always.

Sometimes there were spectacular successes, and just as these powers could predict the Entities, they could be in turn predicted.

"I'm not sure," I said finally. "It's a risky plan."

Contessa grimaced. "I'm not really used to risky plans. I deal in certainty. But everything I know says that the world will end sooner or later, and all indications are that sooner is much more likely."

"Less than two years," I said. "Probably a lot less."

Even their fancy extradimensional base wouldn't be safe if Scion decided to end it all.

"The thing is, we think that you may be the trigger just as much as you may be what saves us," Contessa said. "Scion can't be predicted, but the impact he has one the world can, and it's catastrophic."

"If that's true, maybe you shouldn't have given me these powers," I said.

"It would have happened withing thirty years," Contessa said. "Whether you'd been born or not. This is just our Hail Mary, the one chance we've been able to see for things to actually go in humanity's favor."

I scowled. "And if it doesn't go to plan?"

"Then it ends the same as if we hadn't done anything," Contessa said. "Only sooner. We're sacrificing thirty extra years for a chance at our species having life."

"I could get some people out of the solar system," I said. "I've got Mannequin's power from back when he was Sphere. I could probably get around the Simurgh."

"We thought of that," Contessa said. "It couldn't be done in less than five years, not and have a colony large enough to sustain itself and find a sustainable planet. If you had to terraform a planet it would take even longer."

"Less than two years, right."

Contessa didn't show any of the same subconscious fear of me that most Capes had. Possibly it was the result of decades of dealing with the Triumverate. Possibly it was the result of always knowing what the right thing to do was. Even now that she didn't the confidence still remained.

If she knew how much I itched to drain every last drop of her power she wouldn't stand nearly so close to me. The allure of it, always knowing the steps to take to accomplish my goals was heady.

It was the reason I'd wanted power from the Simurgh. Knowing most possible futures in detail would let me pick the best one. For all anyone knew the Simurgh was almost omniscient; otherwise how could she turn people into living time bombs, able to cause problems like dominoes years down the road.

Not all of her victims were suicide bombers of terrorist attackers. Some of them simply were in the right place to say the right words that led to horrors when heard by the right people.

"I need time to think about it," I said. I hesitated. "If I manage to take the Simurgh, I would imagine that our chances of a favorable outcome will go up quite a bit."

"Or she could drive you to madness before you even have a chance to fail at what we are doing."

"A good reason not to do it beforehand. I'm going to be hard enough to stop as I am now, much less after what you are proposing."

"What makes you think you would even be vulnerable to her abilities once you transcend?" Contessa asked.

"Are you willing to bet the world on it?" I asked. "If I go completely rogue at least there's a chance that Scion might take me down before I end the world tomorrow. Once I do what you're asking though, there's no going back."

She was silent for a moment. "You can't wait forever. The timeline is ticking."

I nodded. "I'll have an answer for you as soon as I make my decision. Do you guys have my Dad?"

She nodded. "And we won't try to use him to pressure you into anything. We need you too badly to risk alienating you."

That struck me as a bit of a lie. These were not people who worried about alienating anyone. As long as I went with their plan or at least offered one that they accepted they would play ball. If I completely refused I suspected that their attitude would change, rapidly.

"I'd suggest you don't," I said. I hesitated. "Don't treat him like the Case 53's. In fact, let me see him before I leave so he doesn't think he's been kidnapped by people out to use you against me."

"It'll be done."

"Also," I said. I hesitated for a moment then said, "Something will have to be done about Eidolon."

For the first time Contessa looked uncertain. "We had no idea that he was part of what caused the Endbringers to keep attacking."

"It doesn't matter if you did or not," I said. "What matters is that in the back of my mind I want to go back to destroying cities and it's because of what he's still doing."

"He won't believe us," Contessa said. "I looked for a Path to convincing him, and all I got was an error message. He is utterly convinced that he is meant to save the world and the thought that he might have been responsible for the death of millions might break him."

"If it does I'll take his powers and you can do whatever you want with him," I said coldly. "You've sacrificed too many strangers to balk at sacrificing your own, or are you all hypocrites?"

"Alexandria and Legend won't like it," Contessa said.

"If they don't, I can use their powers as well," I said. At her look I said, "You gave me these powers. You have no right to be surprised at what they have turned me into."

"The Monster that's going to save the world," she said quietly.

"Are you talking about me or yourself?" I asked.

She stopped walking down the hall. "You think this isn't something I've thought about over the last few decades? I had a life before all this started, and I've given up everything. My soul is so black that even saving trillions can't possibly redeem it."

Part of me believed her, although part of me wondered if she was giving me a little of the truth in an effort to make me trust her more. It was a classic technique used by the cult leader I'd stolen skills from.

"Let me Master Eidolon," I said suddenly.

"He'd see that as a betrayal," Contessa said carefully, although she looked thoughtful.

"It's that or I drain him. His power is going to wake more of the Simurgh's brothers and sisters now that I've killed Leviathan, and the patterns may even change. It's possible that more than one of them might show up, which would be a disaster. The world is on life support and that might be just the strain that sends it over the edge."

Given Eidolon's nature it was unlikely he'd consent to hiding here; he was a man who was driven to be a hero, to fight the good fight. If he wasn't I wouldn't be having the urges I was having.

She sighed then nodded. "I'll arrange it."

Contessa gestured and a doorway appeared in front of us. On the other side of the door was Dad, who looked startled as I stepped in.

"What's going on?" he asked. "People were running for the Endbringer shelters and somebody brought me here."

His eyes looked past me to Contessa. "You! That explains a lot."

She's been the one who'd told him what to say to talk me down when I was overwhelmed by Leviathan's power.

"It's the Simurgh," I said. His face paled.

Even having the4 Simurgh in the same hemisphere made people paranoid. They had to wonder if they'd wake up one day standing over the bed of a wife or child with a dripping knife. Dad didn't have to worry about that with me, although he might with the new woman Samantha.

What he did have to worry about was the other, more subtle effect of her power, the one that was even more perverse. The right word in the right ear at the right moment could create horrors untold. If Contessa had been able to keep me from destroying Brockton Bay with a few words through him, who was to say that the reverse couldn't also be done?

"Is Samantha going to be all right?" Dad asked Contessa.

"She works for us," Contessa said. At his expression she said, "Her relationship with you was entirely unrelated to the work she's done with us, although I can't say I'm entirely displeased."

I wasn't sure I was entirely pleased with that. The kind of work Cauldron did was morally gray at the best of times and I wasn't sure if I approved of Dad dating someone like that.

Even worse, it was possible that the relationship was genuine, but Contessa had set it up by asking her power how to get influence over me through my Dad.

People influenced each other, and having a line into the father of the most powerful Cape on the planet was something that any organization would have been thrilled to do. I was surprised that Dad hadn't had women throwing themselves at him from all over.

Or maybe one of the things Contessa had the PRT guarding against was the women trying to influence him.

"The thing is, I'd like you to stay here with these people for a while," I said.

"I've got a job to get back to," he said. "People to take care of."

I shook my head. "You haven't been back to the Bay yet. There's no jobs available, not yet. There will be once people start to rebuild, but the infrastructure isn't there yet. Besides, all you'd be doing was endangering them."

He stared at me for a moment before sighing. "Because even if they knew you'd slaughter them for taking me they think I'll do what they say if they kidnap my friends."

"We've got a very effective precog who can give you the odds," Contessa said. "I suspect you wouldn't like them."

He scowled.

"I barely got to enjoy Hawaii," he grumbled. "Before I was under house arrest by the PRT with the reporters coming after me."

"If the islands are still standing when I'm through with them I'll go with you," I said. At his look I shrugged. There were no guarantees in Endbringer fights. "If they sink I'll take you to the Carribean or maybe Polynesia."

"Who will be delighted to have you after you sank another island chain," Dad said dryly.

"I'll bet they don't complain," I said, smiling humorlessly.

I doubted I'd have problems getting through airport security even if there was an endlessly durable metal like substance suffusing my body, which itself was made of a crystalline matrix. I'd been studying it with my biokinesis in my downtime, looking for weaknesses.

Greg Vedar had once been talking about role playing, blathering on about things I barely understood. One of the things he'd said that had stuck in my mind was a discussion of glass cannons. According to him glass cannons were characters or forces that were vastly powerful offensively, but defensively weak.

Wizards were a classic example. They could destroy an entire army but they themselves could be taken by surprise and killed by a kid with a rock.

Unfortunately I had a feeling that Endbringers were the reverse of that. To the ordinary Cape they seemed unbearably powerful, but I suspected that they were stronger defensively than they were offensively.

If that was true, then fighting the Simurgh would be harder than I'd thought. She was already devilishly hard to hit. Still, I suspected that I'd be able to get to her core once I got hold of her. Behemoth was another story entirely.

"I'll see you again when it's all over," I told Dad. Glancing at Contessa I said, "Take me to Eidolon."

She nodded, then turned to a regular doorway.

There was no doorway in space this time around. Instead she took me the long way, presumably to get whoever was trying to prepare Eidolon time to convince him to agree to what needed to be done.

I could hear the argument from a long way away.

"This is a setup," Eidolon was saying. "I don't know what her agenda is, but there's no way I'm responsible for those... monsters. Maybe Leviathan is twisting her mind, or maybe she's communicating with the Simurgh. There's some evidence that she's directing them all, after all."

"She says she can feel it from you," Alexandria was saying. "You saw what she did when she first got his power. There wasn't any reason for her to want to attack the rest of us and she turned the moment she got that power."

"That's even more reason to think that she's the one who isn't in her right mind," Eidolon said.

We were finally getting close enough that even without enhanced hearing Contessa could hear the argument.

"Alexandria is immune," she murmured. A moment later a door appeared and she was gone.

I approached the door and took a deep breath.

Opening it I saw him react, his pupils dilating in fear. Before he could move I began to sing.

" _We don't need another hero, we don't need to know the way home, all we want is life beyond the thunderdome_."

I didn't even have to change the song all that much. Changing the intent behind the words was more than enough.

His face slackened and his defensive posture disappeared. Alexandria took a careful step back, obviously unaffected. It made me want her power even more.

I could feel the need to kill fading from the back of my mind. I was sure it wasn't permanent; I'd probably have to reapply it multiple times and have him get therapy for it to take in any kind of permanent way.

When it was done he stood slack jawed. It would take a little while before he returned to his senses.

Turning to Alexandria I said, "How would you like me to fix your eye?"

"It can't be done," she said. She didn't even ask how I'd noticed her artificial eye. "People have tried. My body is fixed and it cannot heal."

"I've got Hatchetface's power," I said. "And while I'm not sure it would be enough to make you fleshy like a normal person, it might be enough for me to grant you Othalla's regeneration."

She looked thoughtful, then looked at her watch. "There's still a little time, and I imagine that one more failure won't hurt."


	69. Race

"That hurt a lot more than I thought it would,"Alexandria admitted.

It had worked, if barely. It had required multiple applications of Othalla's power and even now her eye didn't quite look the way it had before. Of course, before it had been a prosthetic eye and hadn't looked quite right either, at least if you were paying attention.

"I haven't felt pain in thirty years," she said. She looked thoughtful. "Not even the normal pain most people get, like from sitting in one place for too long. This was unpleasant, but it reminded me a little of what it was like to be human again."

"I'm already forgetting," I admitted. "It's like a girl my age should have worries about normal things... boys, school, celebrities. I wasn't all that into it even when I was normal, but now I barely even think about it."

Admitting to that kind of weakness to a woman who's job was to protect the world from people like me probably wasn't the brightest idea. If anyone could come up with a way to counter me these were the people who would be able to do it.

"You've got bigger things to think about," she said. "We all do. I've spent a long time doing nothing but trying to figure out how to hold the world together. It doesn't leave a lot of time for having a normal life."

Considering that she was juggling three roles I wasn't surprised. Being the head of the PRT alone would be enough work for any one person without also having to be Alexandria the media icon and Alexandria the conspirator.

Her eye was still watering, but finally she shook her head and said, "I think that's it."

Hatchetface's power nullified the powers of others but I was still free to use my own, and granting regeneration was an application of my power. If I'd drained Alexandria of power altogether with my original power, I suspected her body would return entirely to that of a normal woman. Hatchetface's power wasn't strong enough to change her body, but it was strong enough to keep her body from maintaining the stasis it had been in for so long.

Shutting his power off, I asked., "So how to you keep your humanity?"

"I'm not sure I have," she said seriously. "But I think the important thing is to keep the things that anchor you to the world. Your father, friends,.even enjoying food and movies and things that might seem trivial. All of them remind us that even though we're more powerful than everyone else we're still part of their world."

"And we can't make decisions for them just because we think we know better," I said.

Considering that I'd just essentially told my father what he was going to do for the next few days without offering him a choice I hardly had any room to talk. It was getting easy to be impatient with people who wanted things different than I wanted.

Maybe Alexandria was right and I needed to reconnect with my touchstones. Maybe a vacation would be a good idea.

Cauldron would probably make a door for me anywhere I wanted to go. Mom had always wanted to visit Paris; I'm sure Dad would like it too.

I sighed. I'd been delaying long enough.

"I guess we'd better get going."

She nodded.

I was still ambivalent about not simply taking Eidolon's power. It would be incredibly useful to me to be able to have any Thinker power I wanted, and there were probably powers that would have an amazing synergy with the powers I had now.

Yet his power, like most of them had its flaws. He'd done things with it without even being aware he was doing them, things that had ended up destroying millions of people. It was possible that had he never gotten his power millions of people would be alive now and the world would be stronger in preparation for the upcoming conflict.

It was also possible that the Endbringers would have awakened on their own and simply been less aggressive. I couldn't be sure,

Given my own psychological instabilities, a power like that might do things I couldn't predict, things that might be even worse for the world.

"I've got a fourth slot," Eidolon shouted suddenly. "A fourth slot!"

For a moment he looked excited, like a kid in a candy store. As powerful as he was, being limited to three powers must have been frustrating for him.

I could see the moment that the realization hit him. If he had a fourth power that meant that one of his powers had been set doing exactly what I said. And if that was true, then that meant that instead of being the savior of the world he was its destroyer.

Sighing, I began to sing softly. " _Sometimes the wrong, don't know they're wrong. Sometimes the strong ain't always so strong_."

This song wasn't as on the nose as my last one, but modifying the lyrics wasn't that hard. It wasn't going to be enough to affect his overwhelming sense of guilt, not in the long run, but it would be enough to get him through the next fight.

I'd probably get impatient if I had to do it too often though. The guilt he was going to feel was only deferred, not completely avoided.

It probably wouldn't hurt to have Tattletale look at him. I'd heard somewhere that Eidolon couldn't be precogged. Of course that might have been due to his connection to the Endbringers and it might no longer be true.

If he was going to do something terrible to himself, I would take his power first. It was too valuable to be lost to the world.

When I was done, he looked dazed again. I didn't have time to wait for him to shake it off, so I grabbed him by the arm and turned to Alexandria.

"It's time."

A moment later we were through a portal and onto a beach. A hundred Capes were on the beach, staring up at the sky. Legend was speaking to them.

"Of all the Endbringers, the Simurgh is the worst. The others can only take your lives, but she can take your sanity."

I found myself wondering why anyone let him give speeches. While he had the technique down, the rich voice, the sense that whatever he said was important, every time I heard him give an Endbringer speech he was a terrible downer.

Armsmaster was at the back of the crowd. His head snapped around and the moment he saw us he jogged over to us. His feet sank deeply into the sand and I wondered if the weight of his armor was going to be a problem in the upcoming fight.

He really needed to learn how to fly.

Members of the crowd wee noticing our arrival. They'd been murmuring before, but now they were growing silent, staring at me. At least a quarter of them had been at the fight with leviathan, which considering that I'd broken limbs on many of them was understandable.

I'd also saved their lives, which I felt should have been more important.

"Where have you been?" he asked. "You were on base and then you disappeared. Your father has disappeared as well."

"He's safe," I said. "I hitched a ride with Eidolon and Alexandria... we had things to talk about. What's the situation here?"

"Unchanged," he said. "No one knows why she's been circling the islands for this long, but all air traffic has been diverted, which is a problem for some planes running out of fuel."

"She was waiting for me," I said, my voice distracted. This much closer to her, I could now hear her voice in my mind.

"The pattern has changed," Dragon's voice came from the armband Armsmaster was wearing. "She is moving in a straight line in your direction."

"An armband," Armsmaster said, offering it. "For communication and to allow Dragon to keep track of how much exposure you've had to the Simurgh."

"You shouldn't really even be here," Alexandria said. "The PRT is normally strict about who can join fights against the Simurgh."

"Right...psychological evaluations, disclaimers, quarantine agreements," I said. "I've done the research."

"If this goes wrong, it could go very wrong."

I wondered why she was suddenly arguing against my participation now when she hadn't questioned it before. It occurred to me suddenly that this was a bit of theater for Armsmaster and the other Capes who were suddenly listening.

"If I hadn't come she'd have gone to Brockton Bay, and I don't think the city would survive it," I said. Looking at the armband I shook my head. "I'm not putting that on."

"It's a requirement to fight," he said.

"An ordinary armband wouldn't do anything to me, which means that this is loaded with one of mine. You'd catch me in an area of null time."

"It might be the only way to keep you from wiping us all out," He said.

I shook my head.

"Do you think any of you can make me wear that?" I asked. I looked at Alexandria, my expression dark. "Do you?"

"All we can do is to ask you to be reasonable," she said.

I stared at her for a moment, then sighed. Everyone was looking at me. If I continued to refuse all I'd do was worsen everyone's morale.

Accepting the armband, my fingers danced over it as I slipped it on. I knew the designs of these intimately, and so it was a simple matter to telekinetically disable the null time bomb within it while leaving the rest of the armband intact.

There were still things I had to do, and being stuck in null time while the rest of the world was destroyed around me wouldn't do anyone a bit of good.

Besides, my brain was no longer strictly human. I knew that better than anyone. It was possible that the Simurgh couldn't affect me at all.

If only I could get that lucky.

"The beach is the best place to meet her," Legend was saying. "There are fewer things she can use against you telekinetically."

She was the most powerful telekinetic on the planet, able to uproot buildings and drop them on people. That was one of the main powers she'd probably use against me. Her psychic scream was the second power I was worried about, as I hadn't gathered any powers that would protect me, other than possibly Leviathan's.

Her precognition was a worry because it would make her difficult to hit. It was said that the Endbringers were immune to precognition, which might be to my advantage, but she would likely compensate by precogging the people around me and what they saw.

From that perspective it would probably have been better for me simply to fight her alone.

The last of the things that worried me was the disparities in our speed. I'd heard that she was capable of flying at Mach 20, sixty times as fast as my fastest speed. I might be able to hit her with Purity's beams if I could avoid her precog, but the smart play would be for her to simply keep her distance from me and use her telekinisis and scream as she could.

That would be a technique I'd have a hard time fighting. I wasn't sure even the Siberian would be able to catch her.

It was entirely possible that she wouldn't be able to hurt me physically, and that this was simply a pretext to get her psychic claws into me, either as revenge for what I'd done to Leviathan or as a way to further whatever inscrutable ends she had.

I was going to have to be clever if I was to get a hand on her, and I was going to need to do so if I was go get her powers.

Her powers were going to be the ones which would help me win the war to save the world. I needed the kind of precognition she had to be able to know the best path to take.

The stars were appearing in the sky as we finally caught sight of her in the distance. I enhanced my vision so I could see her.

Fifteen feet tall, she was the most human appearing of all the Endbringers. Her platinum white hair was almost as long as she was tall, and it floated around her almost like she was in water instead of the air. She had wings, three large sets and then numerous smaller ones. Although she was nude she had so many wings that she was covered in the places that mattered.

Her cold, gray eyes were staring directly at me, even though she shouldn't have been able to see me from that distance. I had no doubt that none of the heroes around me could even see her yet. It didn't matter.

Without a word to anyone I exploded off the sand flying directly toward her. The faster I finished this the less likely she was to use me as a proxy in her effort to end the world.

I heard the others complaining behind me, but with the exception of the Triumvirate they were more of a hindrance than a help anyway, mere fodder for her to kill.

Her expression was blank as she flew toward me at speeds far faster than I'd be able to manage.

Just as I thought we'd collide she veered to the side with a speed I was unable to match, especially when lightning exploded from beneath the surface of the water, striking me with an impact that actually hurt more than anything that I'd experienced since I'd gotten most of my Brute powers.

Water boiled around him, and now that he'd risen from beneath the floor of the ocean I could feel Behemoth from where he was waiting to ambush me.

Fighting two Endbringers at once was more than anyone could do, even me.

That's what the Simurgh had to be thinking anyway. But they'd made a tactical mistake choosing this place of all places to battle.

Water was my element, the power that I had that was stronger than any other. I grabbed Behemoth with it. He could redirect the energy from punches and energy blasts if he knew they were coming, but this was a simple constant pressure.

I pulled him up to me. Without any leverage because his feet weren't touching the ground, much of his massive strength was useless. He blasted lightning toward me, but I spun him at the last minute so that the beam lashed out at the Simurgh instead, who easily dodged it.

As I pulled him to the top of the waves he clapped his hands together, producing a shock wave that sent me tumbling backward.

I dove into the waves, more comfortable here than I was above the water. Here I was much faster than I was in the air, and this was my element.

Pulling him beneath the waves I flew toward him at speeds that he couldn't follow. He began to glow with a brilliant white light, exploding with radiation and heat in all direction.

Above, I could see the Triumvirate fighting the Simurgh.

My immunity to heat was enough that I didn't have to worry about his heat, and radiation didn't bother my Endbringer frame. However, he was powerful enough that if he got his hands on me he could probably tear me apart.

I had to keep that from happening.

Already I could feel Lung's power struggling to work with my Endbringer physiology. It wasn't as easy as it had been when I'd been fully human; Endbringer flesh resisted change. It was working, however. I could feel myself getting a little stronger and larger with every moment that was passing.

The biggest problem was that I didn't know where his core as. Any attacks I made that weren't dedicated toward digging for that would be entirely wasted and simply give him more of an opportunity to finish me off instead.

The Siberian appeared in the water, seemingly unbothered and unslowed by the presence of the tons of water pressing in on us from all sides.

He was bigger and thicker than Leviathan had been, and he dwarfed me. That didn't bother me, because the size difference would also make it difficult for him to hit me. My speed in the water was enhanced not only by Cricket and Circus but by Leviathan himself. I was the fastest thing in the world in the water and he wouldn't be able to touch me unless he got very lucky.

I dodged his grasping fists and I moved to his back. The Siberian was already digging into his back. If I didn't know where his core was, the smartest thing to do would be to cut him in half. The part of him that was still moving would be the part that had his core.

Cut that in half again and again and eventually I would find the core. If it had only been me versus him it would have been simple, but I knew I couldn't depend on the Simurgh to stay occupied by the others.

In fact, I could hear the sound of her screaming in the back of my mind. It wasn't the all consuming pressure that I'd heard Capes talk about but it existed. That probably meant that I didn't have all the time in the world.

As quickly as I could I started digging away. If I got Behemoth's power, my chances against the Simurgh improved. His power was actually strong enough to hurt an Endbringer in a way that Purity's was not.

It was going to be a race against time, one I was afraid I didn't have much of a chance of winning. After all, the Simurgh saw the future. Would she have started a fight that she didn't think she could win?


	70. Visions

Keeping track of the heroes above me fighting was easy; I could feel their fear. It was through that that I could sense the progress of the fight against the Simurgh.

From what I could feel it wasn't going well. Capes were dropping, and the armband design I'd created wasn't working because the Simurgh was ripping them off arms rather than let people drop into the safety of null time.

That might have been an interesting way to capture her. The null time fields floated in the air wherever they were activated. Enough people hurt could have formed a sphere around her, caging her in.

If I tried to use my bombs that way though she'd simply use her telekinesis to send them back at me, possibly trapping me in a null time field instead of her. While the PRT knew how to deactivate them, there wasn't any guarantee that they actually would considering that some of the politicians were afraid of me.

Still, cutting into Behemoth was going to take far too long. Even though I had a lot more power than I'd had when I'd attacked Leviathan, Behemoth was a lot thicker and tougher as well. Cutting him in half was going to take forever, and he was doing his best to boil the water around him into a vapor, although there was always more water.

I hated to think what this was going to do to the local ecology. The radiation he'd emitted already had likely caused untold damage; the heat was only going to make things worse.

Snatching bombs out of my pocket dimension, I barely managed to move out of the way as they activated on their own. Apparently the Simurgh had foreseen me using them and had tried to get me caught in them.

As it was, the Siberian popped out of existence and Behemoth's right leg and left arm were caught in separate fields. Given his powers to control energy he probably could have stopped the fields from forming had he known what was coming. Once the fields were formed though he'd be helpless.

Unfortunately I didn't dare use any more of the bombs, not while the Simurgh could detonate them prematurely.

I released him and flew upward. As long as I stayed out of his field of fire I wouldn't be in any danger now that he was trapped. That would give me the time I needed to deal with the Simurgh.

In the water I was the fastest thing on Earth. Out of it I felt slow and unwieldy, even though I was still fast I wasn't the kind of flier that Alexandria was and definitely not the kind that the Simurgh was. With any other opponent I'd figure out a way to ambush them, to disappear into the mirror universe and appear while they weren't expecting it.

The problem was that the Simurgh would know my every move before I made it. If she couldn't see me directly she could see what impact I had on the world, like an invisible stone leaving ripples in a pond. I'd probably have a better chance of getting to her than anyone else, but even that wasn't much.

Given the way the Endbringer's had been hiding their real powers, I suspected that the only time the Simurgh had been hit in the past was when she'd wanted to be hit.

To get to her I'd have to set up situations in which she had no good choices. She would always pick the way out that caused her the least harm, which meant that I had to make it so that every outcome was damaging.

As I surged toward the surface of the water, I hardened the water under me, using it to push me forward at a velocity that I couldn't have achieved on my own. I flew out of the water flying directly toward the Simurgh.

She moved backward quickly, fast on a level that I couldn't believe. Once I got within arms' length of her she wouldn't be able to match my reaction speed, but with her ability to fly she didn't need to.

The Siberian appeared behind her and lashed out, but she wasn't where she'd been when the Siberian began the attack. She quickly moved out of the Siberian's range and I let the Siberian disappear. Having her appear where I wanted was more useful than leaving her in existence on a part of the field where she wasn't of any use.

It was almost like teleportation, which was the power that I really needed at the moment.

"Dragon, patch me in to Alexandria," I said.

There was no response. Looking down I saw that the radiation from Behemoth's initial explosion had fried the armband, leaving it little more than useless slag. I'd barely noticed.

In fact, I was nude again. My outfit once more hadn't survived contact with the enemy.

It was a matter of a thought to make my skin turn craggy and thorned like Behemoth's. None of the other Endbringers wore clothes; all I had to do was look inhuman enough that it didn't matter. I left my face and hands looking like myself so that my allies wouldn't assume that I was a new enemy and attack me.

"Alexandria!" I called out as I got close to where she was trying unsuccessfully to trade blows with the Simurgh.

She glanced back at me, and the Simurgh took advantage of that to throw a large cape in armor at her. She dodged and the man flew into the sea.

A moment of will caused the sea to eject the man toward the distant shore, where presumably his allies would work on getting him healed.

"I'm not a fast enough flier to reach her," I called out, using Stormtiger's winds to carry my words to her ears. "But if I was to piggyback onto someone who could get me close enough... "

She understood immediately and she flew down to grab me by the shoulder spikes. A moment later we were flashing through the air.

"Two at once," she muttered. "They must want you dead badly."

"I'm not so sure," I said. "Behemoth attacked me from the sea, something that the Simurgh had to know was stupid."

"She doesn't make tactical mistakes like that," Alexandria muttered. "What kind of game is she playing?"

As we approached, her scream grew louder in my mind, which began to hurt slightly. We were closing the gap, however, and if I could get close enough it would all be over. She wasn't likely to be as strong as me, and she didn't have the mass that Leviathan had, much less Behemoth.

Mentally counting the distance down, I felt a hundred things flying in my direction.

"Shit," I muttered when I realized what they were.

All the armbands that the Simurgh had removed were flying toward me. If they got close enough they'd detonate, and I'd be trapped like Behemoth. If they caught my core I'd be trapped for sure until the PRT was able to release me, assuming that she gave them the time.

Undoing null time wasn't an easy task, and certainly not something that could be done in the middle of a battle.

Metal exploded from my spikes, fast enough and hard enough that it actually hurt a little. Hookwolf's metal wasn't usually all that shiny, but my control was better now, and the metal gleamed in the moonlight.

The world faded around us as the null time bombs exploded.

"What?" Alexandria asked.

"We gave her the perfect weapon," I said. "She'll be keeping those floating around her like Rune did with rocks, ready to detonate any time anyone got close."

We'd have to destroy the armbands before we could get to her. I wasn't sure how many of the armbands she'd used, but there had been nearly a hundred in the swarm that I'd seen.

I looked down and I could see her reflection in the water below me. Back in the real world she was dodging blasts from Legend, even though she probably didn't have to. His blasts were strong enough to hurt, but unless he knew where her core was he wouldn't be able to do any kind of lasting damage.

Worse, she might be able to precog where we'd appear back in the real world.

I pulled water up from the ocean. It would vanish moments after we entered the real world, but hopefully it would last long enough to keep us from being trapped.

"Hold your breath," I said to Alexandria.

She looked at me, and a moment later water flowed over her and me.

Water clones appeared all around us, dozens at the same time. Praying a little, I pulled us all back into the real world.

The armbands exploded all around us, leaving waters that should have vanished trapped in bubbles like amber. Each was a shadow image of me or Alexandria.

We managed to get through, however. The waters surrounding us, made of mirror matter evaporated away in the space of an instant.

She still had sixty armbands left floating in a sphere around her. She looked at me, and for once I thought I saw a ghost of an expression on her face. It almost looked like she was smirking. Legend was blasting away at the armbands, but she was able to move them an instant before he blasted them.

Anger rushed through me. She'd killed Capes already today and she'd ruined the lives of millions. She was trying to get into my head even now, hoping to use me as the bomb that destroyed the world.

An act of will was all it took. I'd intentionally designed the armbands with silicon circuitry. At the time it had been because I was afraid the PRT would try to turn my own devices against me. They'd have had to do a major redesign to not use the circuitry and there hadn't been time for anything like that.

The null bombs exploded all around her. The Simurgh was able to dodge between the exploding bombs, dinging the one spot that wasn't covered in null time that she could slip through.

Now it was my turn to smirk. Without the bombs to give her cover, and with Alexandria to give me the speed I needed, this was going to be much closer than she'd probably thought.

"Keep us close," I said to Alexandria.

A moment later the world exploded in light. My vision returned almost instantaneously, and I felt that Behemoth was on the bottom of the ocean. He'd managed to tear his arm and leg off and he'd managed to point his arm up at me to hit me.

Alexandria was falling away from me, stunned by the power that had struck us both. I hoped she hadn't taken any permanent damage; I needed her to get me close to the Simurgh.

Still, as Behemoth used his power to blast at me again I used the water to spin him toward the Simurgh, who dodged. On his own he was heavier than water and wouldn't float, but I was able to use hydrokinesis to push him upwards until he floated on the surface of the water.

He struggled in my grip.

She'd practically given me to me, but why? Was I not actually her target?

Holding back like she usually did was only going to get her killed, and giving me Behemoth's power was only going to make me harder to handle.

No amount of water was strong enough to tear an Endbringer apart, but it certainly could hold him in place.

"I'll be back," I said to Alexandria, who was recovering even though she looked like that had actually caused her pain in spite of what she'd said to me earlier.

Flashing back into the mirror universe, I dove toward where Behemoth had been. My hydrokinesis didn't extend to other universes, so he had immediately started falling toward the bottom of the ocean.

I could see through the reflection of the surface of the water though, at least until he got to depths where there was no light.

Pulling bombs from my dimensional pocket, I set them to go off then dropped them to the place where behemoth was going to be. I them moved away and let the mirror universe collapse around me.

It was unpleasant, but the bombs exploded, holding him in place by portions of his torso. Even if he was able to tear himself away from this, it would simply be less mass for me to comb through to get to his core.

In the meantime he was facing the floor of the ocean. While he could probably do a lot of damage to the landscape if he chose, he wasn't likely to be a threat to me anytime soon.

Of course, that's what I'd thought the last time.

Unlike the Simurgh I didn't have the benefit of both foresight and hindsight, so I could only work with what I knew at the moment. Drawing a picture in the middle of battle wasn't exactly practical unless I was fighting people who couldn't injure me at all, and even then I'd have to keep them from running away.

As I was heading back to the surface, I realized that the Simurgh had to have foreseen all of this; as far as most people were concerned she was practically omniscient. I couldn't understand her motivation for all this if that was the case.

After all, I was more resistant to her scream than most Capes, and physically I doubted she was much of a match for me except for her telekinesis, which I could shadow through if I wasn't protecting people. One I got hold of her I suspected that it would be largely over, and she had to know this as well.

Rising through the air above the water I found myself face to face with the Simurgh. Alexandria was struggling in the distance, presumably being held down by the Simurgh's telekinisis. She wasn't being held under the water, though, which is what I would have done had I been an actual Endbringer.

Staring at her, I tried to lunge at her, but I suddenly found that I couldn't move. Visions began to play across my mind's eye.

 _Rain slicked across the road as Annette drove home. She hadn't finished grading all her papers, but she was tired and it wasn't something she had to do tonight anyway._

 _Danny and Taylor would probably enjoy some takeout; there was a new Chinese place that Danny had been wanting to try and Annette had heard good things about it. Danny had been wanting to show Taylor an old movie he'd found from his childhood. He was as excited about it as a kid in a candy store._

 _Glancing down at her cellphone, Annette noted that Taylor had sent her a text._

" _Getting Chinese," she texted. "What do you and Dad want?"_

 _The rain wasn't too bad, certainly nothing that cause any real problems._

 _Annette swerved slightly to avoid a PRT van coming the other way. The driver seemed to be agitated about something and she hoped it wasn't another gang fight. The last thing she needed was to drive into the middle of a parahuman war._

 _Glancing down she saw Taylor's reply._

 _Looking back up she gasped as she saw a woman in a fedora standing in the middle of the street. She pulled her wheel sharply to the right, and her rain slick tires slid, pushing her inexorably toward a telephone pole._

 _She barely had a moment to regret that she'd been too distracted to put on her seat belt as she went flying through the windshield._

 _Her world turned to pain as the asphalt scraped what had been her face off. Her last sight as the world dimmed around her was of the woman talking on a phone as a doorway opened into space._

 _The woman looked as though the accident hadn't phased her at all, as though this sort of thing happened to her all the time._

 _Her last thought was of her husband and child, wishing she'd get to see them again._

As the world returned to reality around me I felt rage such as I hadn't felt in my entire life. It was possible that the Simurgh was lying to me, but it made perfect sense.

As Contessa had explained it, the Path to Victory told her the steps to take to accomplish her goals, and it rarely gave her any indication as to why. Sometimes she had to do things that seemed nonsensical, like standing in the center of an empty road on a rainy day.

Without Mom's death I would have remained who I was. It was unlikely that Emma would have rejected me as harshly as she had. It was possible that I would have simply ended up on the edges of Emma and Sophia's little clique.

I wouldn't have been in a locker and I wouldn't have felt anything more than a vague need to be a hero.

Heroes were people who felt a need to change the world. People who were content with their world never felt a need to go out in funny spandex and fight strangers.

The genetic cocktail Cauldron had created from what they'd stolen from another world only gave people the powers that were already embedded deep in their cells. It was possible that no matter how many people they tried it on no other person would have the same power set I had.

In that case they'd have had to depend on Sylar to save the world, and the mechanisms of his powers were different than mine. Even worse, he'd have difficulty getting people to work with him given his habit of removing skulls.

If the fate of the world depended on one mother never seeing another sunrise, Cauldron wouldn't hesitate to make it happen. Even worse, it was possible that Contessa didn't even remember having done it. For her, casual murder was just another day at the office.

The Simurgh was staring at me as though she expected me to return to Cauldron immediately and start tearing them apart.

In this moment I was tempted to do just that.


	71. Broke

Light exploded all around me, Purity's power enhanced by Lung's. It was bright enough that it lit up the night sky and it would blind the other heroes.

I needed that edge for what I was about to do. If the Simurgh followed Leviathan's pattern, she wouldn't actually be using her eyes for anything. She'd depend entirely in her precognition to dodge attacks. As long as there were other people watching me, she'd be able to track me through their reactions.

As long as no one was watching she'd be crippled in her ability to dodge me, and in terms of speed she couldn't match me within arm's length.

I lunged forward and grabbed her. She struggled, but I was already stronger than Leviathan had ever been, and although her wings beat at me they couldn't do enough damage to matter.

I climbed up her body and then my entire body turned into a buzz-saw, nanothorn blades on every surface.

She'd shown me the visions she'd shown me both to torture me and to turn me against Cauldron.

While I certainly intended to get my revenge against them, I had enough presence to know that the safety of the human race came first. After all, Dad was part of the world and if he died I'd have no one. Besides I couldn't imagine any worse hell than to somehow survive when every other human on the planet died. An eternity of being alone wouldn't leave me sane for very long.

A building crashed against me, the Simurgh's attempt to get me to let go. The brick crumbled around me, though, and I did not let go.

I was grinding away at her at a rate much better than what I'd done with Leviathan; I was massively more powerful than I had been then, and I was only getting stronger.

She tried to move away from me, and we both went flying at incredible speeds, the world flying by beneath us. In the space of ten seconds we were forty miles from where we'd started, now over one of the Hawaiian islands.

Rock from the edge of a large Volcano began pelting me, propelled by supreme telekinetic force hard enough to sting, even though the rock shattered every time it hit me. The tiny particles floated all around us.

We dropped suddenly, and I was forced to support us with Purity's flight.

Hearing screams below me and feeling a massive spike of fear, I saw what had to be an Endbringer shelter uprooting itself from the Earth. It was massive; it had to be to hold five thousand people. I knew in an instant what her plan was; she was going to use her power to hold those people hostage for me to let them go.

All she'd have to do was lift them up in the air a few hundred feet and gravity would do the rest. The death toll would be hideous and the deaths of every person in the shelter would be laid at my head.

If I was really a hero I'd have let go of her then and there. After all, wasn't I supposed to save people?

Had taking the Passengers of all those villains changed me this much, that I would rather kill this thing than save the lives of thousands of innocents?

She'd chosen a shelter deeper inland, one far enough from the water that I wouldn't be able to use my hydrokinesis to save them. Thousands of people, but if I let her go there was a chance that she'd never let me get close to her again.

Yet if I let these people die would I be any better than Cauldron? Sacrificing the few to save the many? It was the calculation that had said that the life of my beautiful mother had mattered less than the fate of the world.

It hadn't to me.

The other consideration was that even if I let her go there was a chance she wouldn't let go of the shelter. There was nothing I could do to stop her. Even growing to Menja's size and with Lung's power enhancing me and the fear there wasn't a chance that I'd be strong enough to lift a structure that weighed thousands of tons.

The shelter hadn't completely cleared the earth yet; it was massive beyond belief.

Pulling one of my bigger null time bombs from my pocket dimensions with one hand while I clutched her to me with the other, I gritted out, "Put them down."

The PRT knew how to release us from the null time field; if I activated it now and it encompassed us both the shelter would fall back to earth, and people would be injured. But there was also a chance that the PRT would do the math and decide that it was better to leave us both entombed forever rather than face the risk of the Simurgh getting free and admittedly of my ascendance to power.

If they continued to bomb Behemoth, then all the known Endbringers would be vanquished, and most of the PRT either didn't know about of didn't believe in the existence of the others. The world would be at peace for the first time in decades... until my Mastering of Eidolon wore off.

I had no question that Contessa would put a bullet in the back of his head before that happened though. If it pushed the death of the human race back by even a few months I couldn't doubt that she'd murder her own mother in cold blood.

How much of it was fanaticism and how much was her habitually turning her decision making over to her Passenger. Was she even capable of making her own decisions any more?

None of it excused what she'd done, assuming it had even happened the way she'd shown me. The only way to know would be to take her power and look for myself.

She looked at me, her face inscrutable and she almost looked as though she was weighing the decision. Continue and we'd both be taken off the playing field. Whatever plots she had would have to continue onto fruition without her.

Maybe this was what she'd been planning all the time, hoping to get me to remove myself while she let events play out as she had decided in the beginning.

She stared at me with solid gray eyes, and even though I knew she couldn't see me with them it looked as though she was weighing my determination.

"You'll never get to beat Scion," I said. "Or finish your fight with Eidolon. Your plots might work, but you'll never get to see them."

Her assessing gaze continued. I suspected that she was searching the future for the one possibility that would get her out of this. The problem for her was that there was no future universe where I let her go while she held this many hostages.

Finally the shelter began dropping slowly and carefully.

I hadn't stopped digging away with the blades covering my entire body during this entire time. I dismissed the null time bomb and went back to what I was doing, digging her body away until I got to her tasty center.

Again she pulled us both. I could feel her trying to tug at what little remained of my costume, but it pulled away. It didn't matter; I was covered with flashing blades that were a part of me. She couldn't affect me directly and there was nothing she could do to make me stop what I was doing.

She screamed in my face.

A massive pressure began to build in my head. Ordinarily the Simurgh's scream was directed at thousands or tens of thousands of people, but this had her full power directed behind it.

Visions of myself draining Contessa and running through Cauldron's halls slaughtering everyone I saw flashed through my mind. It wasn't a particularly unpleasant image; these were the people who'd ruined my entire life. They'd killed my mother, ruined my friendship with Emma, stolen my childhood and made me into a depressed wreck.

They'd left me so weak that my only choice for survival was to become an inhuman monster that was never going to be able to interact with normal people.

Alexandria had never been connected to anyone romantically. Some people liked to think it was because she had a thing for Hero, but really it was because everyone was intimidated by her. I was an order of magnitude more powerful than she was, more dangerous on a scale the world was only beginning to comprehend.

I was going to spend the rest of my life isolated and alone, and it was possible that I would live for centuries or even millenia. For all I knew I might live forever.

Cauldron had made me a freak. Even if I was somehow accepted by people I'd always be apart from them. One day I'd be a museum piece, a curiosity from a time long gone. Everyone I knew would be dead and gone and I'd be left to go on.

I shook my head and held on tighter. It might be all true, or I might not survive my first encounter with Scion. Whatever happened, Cauldron didn't exist in a vacuum. They'd committed countless crimes, but the reason they'd done so could be laid at the feet of Scion and whoever his partner had been. They'd created the Endbringers like a small boy using a magnifying glass to burn ants.

No one knew why they did what they did, not really, although Cauldron had its theories. Yet what they did was cruel, and we weren't the first, or fifth or even tenth world that these creatures had utterly destroyed.

They'd been doing this for a long time, and if they weren't stopped here they'd leave this world and continue on with another.

Did the Simurgh remember other worlds and other peoples? Or did the Entities create new superweapons every time they found a new world?

It didn't matter. The Endbringers were the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, designed to bring Famine, War and death to ordinary people. In the long run, if they hadn't come Cauldron would never have existed. Had Cauldron never existed, my mother would still be alive.

Scion and the Endbringers were as much responsible for the collapse of my world as anyone in Cauldron. If Contessa was being controlled by her Passenger and the passenger was literally a part of the Entity, then the Entity had literally murdered my mother.

That didn't mean I didn't hold Contessa responsible; she had a choice as to whether to follow the Path or not. It simply meant that I would delay my revenge until I'd accomplish my other goals.

I smirked at her. The more she made me want to kill Cauldron the more I wanted to kill her in return. I increased the rate at which my blades spun. It got harder the farther down I went, but it didn't matter. I'd get her sooner or later, and once I had her powers no force on Earth would be able to stop me with the exception of Scion.

She screamed again, and this time it almost sounded like there was a little desperation. That could have simply been me anthropomorpizing her though. It was entirely possible that the Endbringers weren't actually sentient at all, that they were simply living computer programs that were better than anything mankind or even Tinkerkind had ever created.

I could feel the pressure building in my head. Memories of pain flashed through my mind; the time I'd had an earache, a toothache that had kept me out of school, even of having to rip my own arm off from Bakuda's null time fields. I experienced all of these at the same time, and because they weren't real pains, only psychosomatic my biokinesis couldn't reduce them.

Every pain I'd ever experienced in my life was sprouting up, all at once. I'd forgotten what pain was, a little, and it hadn't even been that long for me.

Images flashed through my mind; the PRT congratulating Sophia when they knew that I was being tortured, Sophia and Emma sniggering over me being trapped in the locker. Dad ignoring me while I suffered in silence.

The entire world had hurt me, and now I had the power to make them pay. I could make every one of them pay, and it wouldn't even be that hard. Start here, a place that literally had water on all sides. I could take Behemoth easily and once I had his power the land wouldn't be safe from me either.

I could slaughter the world and it would be glorious, the kind of revenge that I should have been dreaming about since Winslow. Winslow itself had already been destroyed so my vengeance would have to expand to the rest of the world.

What had the little people done for me anyway? The kids at school had watched me get stuffed in that locker and not a single one of them had lifted a hand to help me. I could have died in there and none of them would have cared.

The system had failed me as well. Principal Blackwell had proven that. When I was just another student I'd been considered lower than dirt. Emma and Sophia and Madison had been the Chosen ones and anything they did to me short of and possibly including murder would have been tolerated.

Even the PRT had known what Sophia was. They'd put a violent sociopath in a high school because her powers were useful to them. Normal people really didn't rate to them.

Ending them all would almost be a mercy. They wouldn't be able to commit that kind of injustice to anyone else.

I shook my head, confused. They wouldn't be able to do it because there wouldn't even be anyone else there to hurt.

I couldn't protect people if I killed them.

Pains that in the real world had been short and transient went on and on, and the real world faded until I was barely even aware that I had a body.

Images of the future suddenly bombarded me. I saw Scion destroying towns and cities, people unable to do anything to him as he slowly wiped out the entirety of the human race. It wasn't anything I hadn't already painted, but it was different when I saw it in full technicolor.

Where Scion should have been there was a blank. I was seeing things from the viewpoint of common people, and I felt their terror in the last moments of their lives. The fears bombarded me.

What I couldn't see was myself. There was no way I'd allow this to go on without at least trying to fight. Had I already been defeated? Had the PRT turned against me and held me in a bubble of null time?

Had the Simurgh turned me and I was even now helping Scion in his quest to destroy the world?

Maybe I'd taken Cauldron's offer and even now I was Scion's partner in crime, waiting to destroy all the Earths that ever were so that I could move on to the next unsuspecting world, where I'd do the same thing again.

Was this future set in stone? Could I change it?

The knowledge that this was my fault suddenly hit me like a freight train. Scion had been content to live his life as he had been for decades; there was no reason to think he wouldn't for decades more. However, I was the only one in the world who could even begin to be a threat to him, which was more than enough reason to start the apocalypse, especially if I seemed to be growing in power.

A thing like Scion had millenia of experience. He'd seen the ways in which civilizations tried to defend themselves and he doubtlessly had figured out counters for them.

The counter for something like me was to end it all before I got so strong I couldn't be handled. He'd have done better to end me when I'd first begun, but even Scion wasn't omniscient.

Killing all three Endbringers was something he wouldn't be able to ignore. Killing the Simurgh would be the beginning of the end, the trigger that would herald the end of the world.

Wouldn't I be better off to stop now, to allow the Simurgh to limp away and heal her wounds so that the world could live to see another day?

Killing the Simurgh would result in the death of billions or even trillions.

Time was the most precious of all commodities. Saving the Simurgh was the same as saving my Dad.

I stiffened. These thoughts weren't my own; they were the last gasps of a dying bird, one that would see the world burn. Saving the Simurgh would save millions? She'd killed millions, or at least consigned them to a life that was a living hell.

Being dead would be better than the life she planned for people. And even if I wasn't here the world would have ended in less than thirty years.

It was possible that I might doom the world, but the world had already been doomed, the only question would be when. However, it was also possible that I might be able to save the world, and if there was even the tiniest chance that might happen I couldn't deprive the world of that glimmer of hope.

Suddenly the world snapped into focus around me. I'd cut through half the Simurgh's body, and now I'd struck something; the core.

It was cracking, and if I didn't take it soon her power would be gone forever.

She stared at me, her expression almost entreating.

The metal around my hand vanished as I grabbed the core and I pulled. The remainder of the Simurgh's body turned to dust.

I screamed as my mind was flooded with images, too many for my human mind to handle. The past, the future, what steps it would take to make people fall in love, to kill, to become terrorists.

I knew _everything_ , and my mind couldn't handle the strain.

My mind broke.


	72. Celebrations

"It's not the worst posting we could have," Missy said.

Standing here in civilian clothes with Dennis, the summer sun warming her skin while a pleasant breeze washed over everything wasn't the worst place she could be. Her body was covered in scars that showed how much worse everything could get.

Spending the summer in Hawaii was an unexpected perk, one that so far she was enjoying. It had been three months since the last of the Endbringers was defeated, and the celebrations around the world had barely begun to die down.

There were even calls in Congress to designate the day as a National Holiday.

Missy and other Protectorate members knew the truth. The End of the world was still eminent even if the Endbringers no longer had a part in it. There were other Endbringers out there, but they were all sleeping and they hadn't stirred since the Simurgh had been killed.

With any luck they'd remain sleeping until the end of the world.

Brockton Bay had been slowly rebuilding. Many people had left, but the solar towers and solar roads Taylor Hebert had created were providing free energy. Furthermore, there was a general consensus that Taylor Hebert would want the city restored, and so FEMA funds had been provided.

For the first time in forever there were jobs for anyone who wanted them, even if they were only in construction. It was a process that was going to take years, unless some Tinker came up with something better.

With Mannequin gone, Tinkers were starting to appear with ideas that could actually make the world a better place. Many had apparently been underground for fear of drawing the Slaughterhouse Nine not only down on themselves but on their families and cities.

"It's still creepy just watching her float around up there," Dennis muttered. "What's she doing up there?"

Twice a day they were required to check on Taylor, who was still hovering where she had been since she'd killed the Simurgh. A small monument had been placed beneath her above the now ruined Endbringer shelter.

There were sensors placed all around her, but a few disrespectful people had been known to try to climb up and take selfies with her or molest her body in other ways. The last thing anyone wanted was for her to wake up with graffiti all over her body.

Most people had taken to coming to this spoke to stare up at her quietly, almost like it was a memorial. The fact that she was fifteen feet tall and rocky hadn't bothered anyone. To most common people her name had taken on a reverence surpassing that of Hero. After all, she was the one who had ended humanity's waking nightmare.

The PRT had dropped null time bombs on Behemoth, who had been tearing himself apart to get free. There had been quiet talk among the people in power about doing the same to Taylor; when she woke there was no guarantee that she'd even be sane. With the powers of Leviathan and the Simurgh at once she'd be almost invincible.

However, Cauldron precogs and Protectorate precogs had agreed that she'd be instrumental in the endgame. Without her the chances of humanity's extinction was one hundred percent more or less. With it, the chances still weren't great, but they weren't zero.

The beach and bay Behemoth had been imprisoned in had been cordoned off from the public. The environmental damage from the radiation he'd emitted would last for thousands of years unless some Tinker found a solution before then. Most of the sea life in the area was completely dead. Most people considered that a small price to pay in return for what they'd gained.

"And why are we doing this?" Dennis asked.

He asked every day, which was a growing annoyance to Missy

"They think seeing familiar faces might help her when she comes back," Missy said. It seemed like a stretch. Taylor Hebert hadn't had much contact with the Wards. The problem was that Armsmaster and Miss Militia had their hands busy with the remnants of the Empire 88 and dealing with periodic attacks from the Fallen.

Gunther, their new leader had proven to be clever and canny. No one knew what his powers were, but he'd managed to stay one step ahead of the Protectorate. The Empire only had a quarter of its previous numbers, but it was now the only major gang in town.

Small gangs popped up every now and again, but without the need for bodies to throw against the Endbringers, the Protectorate had gotten brutally efficient at capturing or killing any newcomers.

The worst part had been terrorist attacks by the Fallen, but the deaths or imprisonment of all the Endbringers had shaken their beliefs that they were gods, and they'd hemorrhaged members. The Protectorate and the Triumvirate in particular had been savage in helping to track them down too.

It was a bad time for all of the villains. Now that they were no longer required for Endbringer fights, the kid gloves were coming off. The governments of the world were getting serious about locking them away and throwing away the key. In some ways there was more fighting now than there had been before the Simurgh had been defeated, but the Protectorate was slowly winning.

The balance of power was shifting toward the good guys, and the people of the world were taking notice.

"Hey, we get a free beach vacation," she said. "Why would you want to argue with a good thing?"

With the nearest PRT base over a hundred miles away they got to stay in a nice hotel. Since they were of the opposite gender they got their own rooms and with the whole island only twenty six miles wide it was easy to get to the beaches, especially with her power. She'd never had a tan this good.

The hardest part of the whole thing was staying in contact with Danny Hebert. He'd quit his job at the Dockworker's association and bought a house near where Taylor now hovered. Missy had been there, and it was a nice place.

Built up on the side of a mountain, it had huge windows and views of the ocean. It had vaulted ceilings that were more than twenty feet tall and open decks, a pool and a spa.

Given the prices that land cost in Hawaii, it had to be a multi million dollar building, but apparently Danny Hebert had gotten access to his daughter's money at some point. Missy suspected that he wouldn't have chosen such an expensive place if it hadn't been the closest place to his daughter that he could acquire.

She was visible from his living room window. Missy wondered how it felt staring out at the inhuman figure that had once been his daughter and wondering just how much of her would be left when she woke. At least she wasn't dead, which was more than most people could say about people who'd faced even a single Endbringer much less two at once.

He'd loved his old job, and he felt tremendously guilty for abandoning the dock workers, but he felt his duty was to be here for his daughter when she woke up.

Considering that he had been the only person able to talk her down the last time she'd woken up after taking power from an Endbringer, everyone else thought it was a good idea too.

Missy wondered if that was the reason they had a female PRT agent living with him now. Were they really a couple or had the PRT put her there to keep an eye on him? The thought that the PRT might ask its agents to actually have sex someone was something she didn't want to believe, but she couldn't entirely dismiss it.

It was possible that it was a genuine relationship though. Danny Hebert certainly seemed nicer than Missy's dad, and spending time with him wasn't near the burden that spending time with her own family would have been.

In fact this whole vacation had been nothing but pleasant. Tourism had mostly vanished as an industry over the past few decades due to people's fears, but now that villains were keeping a lower profile and no one was afraid of seeing the Simurgh outside of the window people were starting to go out again.

People had hope, something that hadn't existed in people for a long time. The list of medals Taylor was due to be awarded when she woke was as long as Missy's arm, granted by most of the governments of the world. She'd never have to worry for money either; the bounties on the Simurgh and the other Endbringers was high enough to make her worth hundreds of millions.

That was assuming that she didn't decide to end the world herself, of course.

Staring up at the figure above her, Missy shook her head. She wasn't sure she was ready for Hebert to wake up. No one person should have that kind of power, and she didn't see how it wouldn't corrupt her absolutely. Some of the things the Simurgh had been reputed to be able to do still made her wake up at night with nightmares.

On the surface the governments were offering medals, but deep down everyone had to be afraid of her. No one would ever trust her, not with those kind of powers. With Leviathan and the Simurgh alone she was Brute 9, Thinker 10 +, Master who knew. With her array of other powers, there was nothing short of her own null time bombs that could take her out and she _could see them coming._

Her communicator buzzed.

"What's up?" she asked.

Because there weren't hardly any villains here other than tourists who weren't looking for anything other than a good time, there wasn't a Protectorate presence here even though there was a PRT base. It seemed strange to Missy to have nameless PRT agents manning the comma, even though it shouldn't have.

"Behemoth is gone," the woman on the other side of the microphone said shortly. Her voice sounded almost like she had been crying.

"What?" she asked. The entire world seemed to spin around her as horror sent chills down her spine. It was like waking up from a nightmare only to realize that you were still in the nightmare.

"He vanished overnight. The sensors put in place to watch over him all mysteriously failed all at the same time."

Glancing up at Taylor's floating body, Missy shook her head. "Do you want us to come in?"

"Check in with Hebert senior and then come in," the woman said. "There will be an emergency meeting at 1500."

They still had five hours then.

The horror on Dennis's face was probably a mirror of her own. The last three months already seemed like a dream, like Atlas had finally been free of carrying the sky only to have to take it up again.

It shouldn't have happened, all the sensors failing in sequence. They were designed to detect people approaching too closely almost as much as they were to make sure Behemoth never stirred. While no one thought that anyone would try to release the Endbringer, there were still a few members of the Fallen left.

With a hundred different sensors, having even one fail should have sounded an alarm, which was more than most Tinkers could arrange. It sounded a lot like what the Simurgh had managed back in the day.

Missy's eyes narrowed.

"I'm going to take a look," she said, pointing upward.

He didn't ask any questions. It was funny how much of his weird sense of humor had vanished since the world had gone quiet. It was almost as though all the bad jokes had been his way of reducing the constant tension and fear that none of them had even been aware of back then.

Reducing the thirty foot distance between her and the floating monstrosity wasn't all that difficult. She reached up, and to observers on the outside it probably looked like her arms had warped and stretched when it was really space that had done so.

Reaching up, she gingerly tried to touch the rocky spikes that made up her flesh. According to Armsmaster, the sharp parts of her spikes were designed to cut through Endbringer flesh, so it would be very easy to cut her hand off if she wasn't careful.

Her hand vanished inside the spike. She felt nothing but open air.

"It's a hologram," Missy said. "She's gone."

"Miss, you need to step back," she heard Dennis say from behind her. The number of hawkers had been constant at first, but numbers had dropped off, and they usually didn't have anyone until later in the afternoon.

" _You won't tell the PRT what you found_ ," she heard a voice from behind her say.

She turned and stared.

A girl in a black hoodie was standing before them. She was a little tall, but under the hood her features weren't those of anyone Missy recognized. Her eyes, however were solid gray and cold.

"Taylor?" she asked cautiously.

Calling the PRT would be the best option; if Taylor Hebert was loose the world needed to know. Yet somehow Missy found herself unwilling to reach for the button.

" _I've been called many things_ ," the girl said. Her voice sounded like a chorus, yet it was somehow beautiful and compelling all at the same time. Missy could have sat and listened to it all day.

Dennis's expression showed that he felt the same way.

"What do you want us to do?" she asked.

" _Say nothing until the time is right,"_ she said. " _Once the fact that I am awake becomes known, Scion will begin to end the world."_

If anyone would know, she would. Still, it didn't sit right to Missy, lying to people.

"Your father has been waiting to see you," she said. "How long have you been awake?"

" _Two weeks_ ," she said.

She'd been gone for two weeks and no one had noticed? She had a array of almost as many sensors around her as Behemoth had. How had she managed to build something and get it in place without anyone noticing?

The answer was obvious. She had telekinesis that would work anywhere she could sense, and her senses extended out to a distance that no one was really able to fathom. She'd undoubtedly chosen the moment when someone was looking away from a monitor to make the change, having already built what she needed elsewhere.

" _I saw my father this morning_ ," Taylor said. Her expression was blank and emotionless, as though she was talking about the weather. " _In two years I will have a sister, assuming the world survives. Her name will be Anne."_

Missy stared at her. Did that mean that she saw that far forward, that she knew when her father and his new girlfriend would be...doing things?

Did she know who Missy was going to end up with? How far ahead did her precognition stretch?

What had she been doing over the past two weeks? She couldn't have left the island without being seen by Dragon, not unless she'd used some kind of Tinker stealth device to keep her hidden. While none of the Tinkers she'd taken in the past had specialized in that kind of technology, there had been many Tinkers who'd come to examine her body over the past few months. The Simurgh had been able to copy the powers of Thinkers and Tinkers in her range.

The Simurgh hadn't had to make her scream audible to anyone. She'd done it simply to troll everyone, at least according to Tattletale.

How long had Taylor had to change the world undetected. She could have flown over Washington DC, Beijing, Moscow and other major centers of power altering the minds of politicians and military minds without anyone knowing.

With only two weeks to work with she could have taken over the world had she wished. The chill down Missy's spine grew worse.

"What have you been doing all this time?" she whispered.

" _There were eighteen Endbringers left_ ," she said tonelessly. " _Now there are none._ "

"With Behemoth as the last?" Missy asked. The enormity of the power the woman in front of her had to have by now was overwhelming. Did any of her humanity even remain at all?

Taylor Hebert simply stared at her without answering. It was answer enough. She wouldn't have let Behemoth escape, not when his powers were so useful.

"People are going to be upset," Missy said. "Why didn't you just make a hologram of Behemoth?"

" _The best chance of success depends on certain actions at certain times_ ," Taylor said. She stared off into space as though she was seeing things that no one else saw. " _This is that time_."

It didn't answer Missy's question, not really. But the Simurgh had been known for setting up almost Rube Goldberg situations. Sometimes the people she'd infected hadn't gone mad, they'd simply been in the right place at the right time to say the words that would set someone who had never been around the Simurgh off.

If Taylor thought that certain people needed to be upset to accomplish her goals, she was probably right.

"I'm not sure we'll be able to lie," Missy said. "Armsmaster has his lie detection gadgets and some of the others are pretty good at figuring out when we aren't telling the truth."

As a teenager trying to get away with something it was annoying. Facing Alexandria with her thinker powers on the other hand was terrifying.

" _It won't be a problem_ ," Taylor said. A moment later she began to sing, and the world around Missy began to spin.

Lying wasn't going to be a problem, not at all.


	73. Ripples

So much to do and so little time.

A politician races to get to the meeting about Behemoth escaping. In five years he will sponsor anti-parahuman legislation that will result in thousands being displaced. A small manipulation of a brake pad sends him spinning out of control into a river. His body won't be noticed for almost five hours because a series of distractions makes people miss the rural road he was driving on for just long enough that no one saw the accident.

Spilling coffee leads a man to a chance meeting with a young barista. In five years they will have a child who will eventually create a world changing technology, one that can be replicated without help by Tinkers. It will revolutionize the world and set the world on the path to something greater than anyone would realize.

A subtle change in brain chemistry leads to an argument between a man and his girlfriend. She will leave him as a result, starting an affair with a senator in six months that will derail his career. That Senator would have sponsored legislation dismantling the Protectorate in a post-Scion world.

Turning his head slightly causes one man to see a glimmer in the underbrush. This leads to his finding a body. Discovering the body early will lead police to stop a serial killer before he kills a pregnant woman who is destined to give birth to a child who was to become a great peacemaker.

A billionaire stumbles across a magazine article which will lead him to investing in space research. In twenty years this will lead to humanity's first interstellar ship, a first step in making sure that humanity won't go extinct when the next Entity finds Earth.

An ordinary scientist happens to look through a microscope as a certain spore contaminates the slide. This will lead to a revolution in antibiotics, something that would be needed in seven years as a plague was due to begin in ways that weren't as easy to stop.

Ripples in a pond; the lives of humanity were an open book. A thousand different possibilities everywhere I looked, and so little time. The changes that needed to be made were obvious, and most of the time they were small.

A tiny tweak in someone's attitudes here, a small telekinetic push there, and changes propagate through time, butterfly wings growing into hurricanes over time. The sheer volume of information had broken me, and it had taken time for me to learn to control the flow of information to a simple raging torrent instead of a world ending tsunami.

All of the predictions would come to nothing if I lost against Scion, but I had to prepare for victory because defeat would mean that all preparations came down to nothing.

Making some people fall in love and other people break up was child's play when you could see all the steps along the path. Unlike Contessa I not only knew the steps to take, I knew _why_.

There had been blind spots; certain precogs and Scion, but there were workarounds. Drawing pictures was more profitable when you knew the context around them, and you could work out what those blind spots were by their impact on the world. It was like an invisible rock being throw into a pond; while you couldn't see the rock itself you could follow the ripples and make an educated guess as to what was happening.

It wasn't that there were many that I couldn't see anymore anyway. Eidolon, Scion, some of the most powerful precogs and thinkers. At one time the Endbringers would have been among the group, but that was no longer a problem.

I was aware that my thoughts were no longer human, but there was nothing that could be done. Human minds weren't designed to take this kind of input, so I'd had to redesign my own mind. It was like a fly's vision; instead of a single view there were eight thousand.

Borrowing skills from thinkers around the world had helped. Now I was almost stable, almost ready to take the one action that would actually be a risk to me.

It was ironic that I could see all of time and space and yet the fate of humanity still rested on a gamble.

Part of me wanted to start world building already, but that would be premature. Not only would Scion be alerted to my presence, but I knew how the people in power would react.

No one would believe I knew what they needed better than they did. They'd see a threat, and while they weren't a threat to me, they would be to my projects. Even if I succeeded in taking care of Scion I would need to work behind the scenes.

It wasn't gambling if you knew what was going to happen after all.

Yet it wasn't easy despite all my power. Change one thing and a series of other things change, some of which would threaten to interfere with other changes you made. It would take additional interference to keep that from happening, but that interference would itself cause other ripples.

It had been easier for the Simurgh; chaos was the universes natural state, and destruction didn't take much in the way of pre-planning.

Creation on the other hand was much more challenging. It required constant maintenance and tending. People had to be pruned and weeding had to be done, with fertile ground carefully sown with seeds that would sprout in the richness of time.

Humanity had the power to rise to greatness. If Scion was defeated there would be other Entities, especially if humanity reached for the stars. They had to be ready to learn enough that they could fight and win, and the paltry information the Entities had allowed Tinkers to have wouldn't be nearly enough.

People needed to be creating their own technology, and that required money and infrastructure and most importantly a will and a drive to succeed. That required sets of conditions that were very specific.

It was difficult to remember what human emotions were like. I still felt anger sometimes, but fear now seemed like a foreign concept. Hope and love were still in me somewhere.

Yet the petty concerns that had obsessed me when I was more human seemed to slip past me now.

Why had the bullies bothered me? I had trouble remembering.

Had there been a little jealousy that my father was getting involved with a new woman? I couldn't imagine why. Perhaps seeing my new sister in the future was part of what took the sting of that away.

Being afraid of Sylar had seemed perfectly reasonable when I'd been human; now it seemed almost quaint. I knew the role he was destined to play, and it was necessary.

Had I been worried about finding romance? Now I couldn't imagine why I would need anyone else, not when I had all of time and space as my mental playground. I could experience sex by riding along inside the heads of anyone.

The fact that people would feel threatened by me was a simple fact, but it didn't matter. I had plans for the world, and no one was going to be able to stop me. I had already seen how all their plans would pan out.

I even knew why the Simurgh had sacrificed herself. She hadn't had any grudge against humanity; she'd only followed her programming. She hadn't really been sentient at all, but despite that she'd had something like affection for Eidolon. She'd seen his terror when Scion destroyed the world, and she'd foretold his death.

Giving me her powers was the only way she'd known to possibly avert both fates. She hadn't even been afraid.

Yet her programming had also not allowed her to kill herself. She'd had to fight, and she'd had to hope that I'd win, once Leviathan was gone and she could no longer fully see me.

Having left Vista behind, I flew invisibly across the world.

It was time for the endgame, and that required certain things that had to be done.

Landing outside a nondescript door in Spain, I became visible again, and I knocked.

The face he'd taken was that of a middle aged businessman, but he knew me the moment he saw me despite the fact that I wasn't wearing my own face. Perhaps it was the eyes, or perhaps it was the fact that he was unable to see through my flesh like he'd been able to with everyone else.

He sighed. Apparently he'd known I would be coming, even if he hadn't known exactly when.

"Do we have to do this?" he asked. He took a step back into his apartment as I stepped inside, the door closing itself behind me. I could feel him trying to push me back with telekinisis, but I brushed it off like I would a fly. It seemed incredible that I'd once found this amount of power to be overwhelming when my telekinisis alone was now at least a thousand times as powerful as his.

Sylar's face changed back into his own as I nodded. He grimaced. He knew what was coming, and he didn't beg or plead. It made me respect him a little more, which wasn't hard since I had previously respected him not at all.

Using Tohu's power I copied Sylar's power; I was able to copy the powers of three Capes at a time without limit, including the powers of people who weren't even parahumans. It was probably a version of the power that the Entities used to give Shards new powers.

Grasping him with telekinisis that far outstripped anything he'd ever been able to generate, I copied his power, and a moment later be began to scream as a line of blood appeared at the top of his head.

Removing his skull was simple, and a moment later I was examining the inside of his skull. It seemed cruder and less efficient than simply stealing his power, but I had uses for him in the future.

Once I had his power, I could let go of Tohu's power. I _understood_ his power, and now I could use it to bootstrap other powers from people I didn't want to strip of their own powers. Unfortunately, I only managed to acquire his base power, and without X-Ray vision, or something similar, I'd be forced to take unfortunate actions.

Fortunately, Cauldron had released other people with x-ray vision into the cities of the world; I would choose the worst of them, a serial sexual predator, and I would take his power. I was sure that doing so was part of Contessa's Path.

Replacing his skull, I saw that it regenerated almost instantly.

"You aren't going to kill me?" he asked. "After everything I did."

" _I know your future_ ," I said. " _You can still be redeemed._ _If you do not, I can make your life a hell unending._ "

His face paled. He'd just had his skull removed, and that was only a hint of the pain that I was capable of causing him. Considering that he could regenerate any damage, torture could last an eternity.

For a moment I considered ending him despite the future I saw for him. He had the potential to make waves in the world that could lead to great good, but did it really make up for all the bad he'd committed? He'd been a serial killer, and even if he never killed anyone again it couldn't make up for the pain all the families felt.

Scowling, I turned away. I still resented him for what he'd done to Crystal and her family, but in the future I was planning for the world he would play a vital part as my agent. He'd be able to do things that would make what I was trying to accomplish easier.

Sylar's power sang within me. It wasn't just power replication; I already had better versions of that. It was _understanding_ , a power that not even Scion had, with all his thousands of powers. It was a critical component of what I had to do, and without it none of the rest would work.

His power craved knowledge, and the Simurgh's power provided all the knowledge in the world. Yet now that I had Sylar's power that knowledge was beginning to make sense to me in ways that it hadn't before. I'd be able to make changes with fewer tweaks here and there, and my control of everything was going to be more efficient.

Finding the sexual predator was a matter of moments. Getting to him took minutes. Taking his power and snapping his neck took no time at all.

Now that I had the power to take the powers of others without depriving the heroes of critical powers, I had the beginnings of what I needed to end it all.

Fletchette had the power the Entities used to kill each other. Mantellum could cloak himself from other shards. Even knowing he existed was difficult, but with Sylar's power I understood things about him that Cauldron did not. Even though I could not see him, I could see the ripples he made in the pond in hundreds of alternate futures, and I could understand exactly what it meant.

Taking the powers of the Doormaker and the Clairvoyant had been an obvious step even before I had Sylar's power. I would need the Doormaker to get into the place where Scion was hiding his true body, and the Clairvoyant to find it.

Depowering the entire population of the Birdcage with the exception of the few people I knew were relatively innocent wasn't strictly necessary for what I was going to do, but it seemed just. Those were people who didn't deserve the powers they'd been given, and they weren't part of my ultimate plan for the world anyway.

Copying Tattletale's power was a given. The synergy with Sylar's power would be incredible. There were a dozen other thinkers I wanted to take, but there wouldn't be time, not before the final confrontation.

Despite all my powers, though, it still wasn't a certain thing. If Scion was still at full power it wouldn't have been possible at all. He'd given up the majority of his power to hand out shards to tens of thousands of people though, which meant that he was much weaker than he would have been at his full power.

Thousands of possible futures, and it didn't matter when dealing with someone who could see the future just as well as you could. It was a game of chess in which each side could see the entire game from beginning to end, each move changing the board and the other side changing their own moves in response.

I planned to cheat, of course. I wouldn't be me if I didn't, and besides, it could be argued that all the Entities did was cheat. They made Faustian bargains with races who weren't even allowed to see the fine print.

"Door me," I said.

As the doorway appeared in space before me I smirked. I'd already set into place the series of events that would make Contessa's life a living hell. None of the pieces would take effect until after the world was saved.

Her power gave her a Path to Victory, but it required that she ask the right questions and I knew how to keep her from doing that. A tiny distraction here to divert her mind just as she was about to make a connection that would bring it all tumbling down.

Someone interrupting her at a different time, forcing her to deal with a problem instead of thinking things through.

She'd do what I asked because it was what her Path told her was necessary for the world to survive. I wasn't sure she even cared whether or not she herself survived. She was that kind of fanatic after all. She'd sold her soul a long time ago, and she was willing to pay the piper.

Although I still loved my mother I could understand why she'd had to do what she did. Heroes were people who were unhappy with the world, people who were willing to do whatever they thought was right to make it a better place.

Happy people didn't make good heroes, and as long as I'd had Mom and Dad and Emma, I would have been content to live out my life as a normal person. Stepping out and seeking danger would have been foreign to me, and even if Contessa had granted me the powers that she had I wouldn't have had the drive to use them.

The world would have ended, and my mother would have died anyway.

That was Cauldron's attitude and who was I to argue. I'd let a serial killer get away with murder just because I knew that he could do more good alive than dead. Contessa had killed an innocent woman because her death would do more good than her life.

It didn't make me resent her any less.

Contessa appeared before me, and I stared at her long and intently. It was possible that the Path to Victory held some things that my own vision didn't, even though Scion seemed to be immune.

" _I have a list of people whose powers I need to acquire_ ," I said. " _I understand you have a regenerator among those you have empowered._ "

Lung's regeneration was strong, but the healing granted on Sylar's world was incredible. I'd need that kind of resilience for the fight ahead.

Although her Path couldn't have told her what I'd need, she seemed to have guessed, because she simply nodded compliantly. It might have been because she knew that I had every reason in the world to kill her, and because nothing short of Eidolon with a hidden null bomb was going to be able to stop me.

" _When we have finished gathering those powers_ ," I said. " _I think it will be time to visit the garden._ "

The true meaning of being a hero was being willing to sacrifice yourself for the sake of others. While I was no longer remotely human, once I'd gathered the powers from the corpse of the downed Entity, I wasn't sure if I'd even remember being human.

As long as I remembered who I was to fight and who I was to protect, it wouldn't matter if I ceased to be me. I could only hope that I wouldn't become a greater threat than what I was trying to fight, and for all my precognition there was no way to tell what would happen.

One way or the other, it was the beginning of the end.


	74. Heroes

Sitting in his office, Matt Parkman considered the twists and turns his life had made. He'd been a police officer, he'd helped save the world, and now he was working against his own kind. Telepathy was a curse in some ways; it took the surprise out of human interactions and being able to control minds made everything too easy.

His power was growing, and working for a woman who was admittedly racist against his kind wasn't ideal. However, the world was going to end and she had a solution that would save his family, something that made the horrors he was having to subject people to worth it.

After all, wasn't the important thing that humanity survived? Whether it was evo or ordinary human, people had to survive, and that was worth any pain that had to be inflicted on others.

He'd railed against the Company for so long, but now he was working for people who were even worse.

Matt stiffened as he felt a Presence appearing in the room.

A teenage girl stepped through a door in space. Without his mental senses Matt would have thought her ordinary and rather nondescript except that her eyes were milky gray. She stared at him wordlessly, and he tried to enter her mind.

Thousands of images rushed through his head all at once; past, present and future all wrapped together and intertwined with strands of cause and effect and possible triggers that could change the world from one possible timeline to another.

It was overwhelming, and one image conquered all others; that of a monstrous, world encompassing worm, one that flitted among the stars destroying world after world in an attempt to prevent the inevitable death of the universe.

More sensations than he could handle, it was like he was drowning.

His mind broke, and he slumped over in his chair drooling. Later testing would show that he'd had multiple tiny strokes in his brain.

The girl stared down at him; she was fully capable to healing him, but she chose not to. A moment later the world shimmered and she was gone.

* * *

Hiro Nakamura heard a buzzer at the door.

The government had been getting more strident about making evos register and he was thinking about moving again. He'd had offers from a woman who reminded him a little of people who worked for the Company. He had a sneaking suspicion that she wasn't going to be willing to say no, although he wasn't sure how they were going to make him do what they wished.

As he opened the door, he stopped time. It wasn't really stopped time; it was incredibly slowed time, but for all intents and purposes it might as well have been. In all the time he'd used it, only one person had proven resistant, a girl who was a speedster. Even she'd been reduced to moving at normal speeds while within it.

He studied the teenage girl in the black hoodie standing before him. She was wearing sunglasses and her face was nondescript.

He glanced outside. There wasn't any signs of company operatives or people out to hit him with tranquilizer darts.

He looked back, and he was unnerved to see that the girl had changed positions. She had turned her head and she was staring at him. _That shouldn't be possible._

A moment later she was gone as though she'd never existed. He was horrified.

He let time collapse around him, and as he turned to go back into his house, he felt darts strike him in the neck.

He tried to teleport or go back in time, anything, but his power required concentration, and whatever they had used had left him too groggy for any of that.

Someone else appeared out of thin air, this person most likely having been invisible.

Hiro fell to the ground as the man spoke into his communicator. His voice seemed strained, but professional.

"Does anyone have eyes on the girl?"

The new version of the Company had finally gotten what it wanted. They'd bee collecting people with powers for reasons that he did not yet know. As he fell unconscious, Hiro wondered who the girl was and why she'd been at his door.

He would never know that she had made a series of small changes that would ensure that ultimately he would be freed. Only the fact that his imprisonment would help more in the long term than his freedom .

* * *

Claire Bennett stared out at the ocean.

Revealing the existence of Evos to the world hadn't turned out the way she'd thought. She'd assumed that once everything came to light that the government and the Company would no longer be able to do horrible things to people simply because they'd been born different.

Instead the government had gone the other way. Oh, they'd given lip service to increased cooperation between ordinary people and Specials, but they'd enacted laws requiring people to register. Claire had been exposed to enough comic books to know where that tended to lead.

Worse, her father hadn't approved of what she'd done at all. He'd been part of the Company for a long time, and part of him still believed in the Company's ideals. It was still hard for Claire to believe that the caring man who had raised her had done horrible things to people simply for what they were born with. He'd killed, and the people he'd killed hadn't always been violent.

Peter was trying to start a resistance, but it was fighting against the tide of public opinion. When ordinary looking people could shoot death rays when you had a fender bender with them, other people took notice. The fact that most Evos had harmless powers didn't change people's minds.

Someone with super hearing wasn't a threat to anyone, except maybe as a blackmailer, but he'd be crucified just as much as a telepath or a lighting controller. It didn't make sense to Claire. Whether someone shot you with lightning or a gun, you were equally as dead, so why should they be treated any differently.

She'd tried to use the small fame she had to make common sense suggestion to legislators, but they'd repeatedly chosen to ignore them in favor of more draconian measures designed to inflame opinions and lead to evos either fleeing the country or revolting.

Hearing steps from behind her, she looked back. The ship they were on was old and the seas choppy. As a result of her powers she was largely immune to motion sickness, but the other passengers were not.

She stiffened as she realized that she didn't recognize the figure behind her. A young girl in a black hoody, with alien gray eyes.

She tried to open her mouth to scream out an alarm, but she couldn't. She couldn't move either.

For long moments the girl simply stared at her. The girl frowned and she almost looked as though she pitied Claire. A moment later, she nodded to herself and Claire felt a pressure in her mind.

The girl vanished, and Claire turned back to the sea, the memory of the entire encounter gone as though it had never happened.

* * *

"The government is lying," Micah said. "Registration is not the sensible option, optional for Evos who are willing to comply. I am releasing documents showing that the government plans to make it compulsory in the next six months. They are planning to create a new agency whose sole purpose is to hunt down and incarcerate Evos whose only crime was that they didn't want to expose themselves to people who didn't have their best interests at heart."

He didn't need a camera or a modem or even a computer to download his message onto the Internet. Machines were his to control, and the Internet was his playground. In a different time he'd probably be doing what every other teenager his age was doing with the Internet; watching cat videos and watching porn.

Now, though, he had a cause. His mother was dead and if he wasn't careful he was going to lose even more people. He had to reveal the truth to people, but it was an uphill battle. Even though he was able to master the Internet, he couldn't master all of it. It wasn't a limitation of his power, it was a problem that the Internet was too vast to be comprehended by any human mind.

No single person could dominate the Internet, which meant that the corporations and government entities arrayed against him had all the advantages.

Sometimes he felt like a preacher standing on the street corner preaching about the end of the world. No one believed him, but the message had to be told.

Although the room was dark, he heard a sound from behind him. He turned and he froze.

A girl in a black hoodie stood in the corner of the room. He couldn't see her face, but her eyes almost seemed to glow. He felt like he had to get up, to run, to do something, but he felt frozen.

She stared at him for long moments, then nodded.

A moment later she was gone, and he turned back to his message, unaware that anyone had been there. New ideas sprouted in his mind though, ways to get his message out that hadn't been there before. He felt excited. These ideas, if they panned out were going to make his message reach out to millions of people who wouldn't have seen them otherwise.

That uneasy feeling that he'd had before about the future had gone away, replaced with something like peace.

* * *

"Are we sure we should be doing this?" Alexandria asked. "The powers she's taking, there won't be any stopping her."

"We lost the moment she took Leviathan," Eidolon said. His face looked haggard. As Canary's mindbending had faded, the true enormity of what he'd been responsible for had overwhelmed him. Because of his own need for conflict, to be a hero millions of people had died or been twisted.

The entire world had fallen into chaos and it was all his fault.

Alexandria knew that he'd considered suicide more than once, but ultimately he'd concluded that it wouldn't have helped. He'd made this world, and if he wanted a better one he would have to be part of the solution.

It didn't make the guilt any better; in some ways it made it worse.

Depression was his constant companion, and while there were powers he could use to temporarily suppress it, they only made it worse when he stopped using them, reminding him of just how much pain he was actually in.

The fact that for all her knowledge she had no idea how to help him was galling to her.

The teenage former supervillain Tattletale probably had a better chance, even if her attitude continually annoyed Alexandria. Having her here as someone who had some experience with Taylor, even if it had been minimal and a useful Thinker power was something Alexandria had only reluctantly agreed with.

"We could have done something even then," Contessa said. "But now she has the Simurgh's power and a copy of the Path to Victory. Now that she has the power of the Doormaker and the Clairvoyant, its out of our hands."

"And what happens when she wins?" Alexandria asked. "I liked her well enough, but does anyone really think that the world ought to be ruled by a fifteen year old girl?"

"She's not a girl," Legend said soberly. "Not now. According to our best thinkers she's barely even human."

"And when she visits the garden and takes everything, what will she be then? Are we just resurrecting the very thing we tried to kill?" Alexandra shook her head. She had her own thinker powers, but the thought of what the girl was capable and trying to predict her future actions was beyond them.

Before anyone could answer the question, the girl who had been Taylor Hebert appeared beside Alexandria. She stared at her expressionlessly.

" _It's time to reap the garden_ ," she said. " _I have finished my preparations_."

"Preparations?" Alexandria asked. "More than just running around and stealing powers."

Ordinarily her powers made it easy to read people. She was used to always being a step ahead. Taylor, however was as opaque as a stone. It was frustrating, and she wondered if this was how people found her.

" _I have been building,_ " Taylor said. " _Things that are necessary to preserve everyone._ "

"When did you have the time?"

" _Time no longer constrains me_ ," Taylor said. " _Combine the ability to understand with a natural control over technology beyond anything the Passengers provide along with the knowledge that they Entities themselves have gathered, and it is possible to do things that are... unexpected_."

"Will we fight?" Eidolon asked, hopefully.

" _If you wish to die_ ," Taylor said. " _This is not a battle for such as you_."

Alexandria didn't need her power to tell her that Eidolon's entire world collapsed in that moment. It was all over his face. He looked shocked and horrified. Eidolon's entire existence had centered around being the best, the strongest, the hero. Being casually dismissed as being irrelevant had to be as horrible as anything. He'd given up everything, children, family, a chance at love all so that he could be the one who would make a difference.

Taylor Hebert had just told him that he was a bystander. He didn't matter any more than an average person on the street. It had

Being the one person in the world fully invisible to the Simurgh's power had to be the reason Taylor hadn't chosen her words more carefully. Or had it been deliberate, punishment for the way in which he'd effectively and singlehandedly destroyed the world.

Taylor patted him on the shoulder awkwardly. She then narrowed her eyes and a moment later Eidolon relaxed.

"I'll help with the cleanup," he said. He smiled and almost seemed excited about it, his former malaise almost completely gone.

Alexandria felt a sudden sensation of horror. Telepathy didn't exist in the world, not really. The Simurgh had been able to do the closest thing in the world to it, but even that hadn't really been the ability to read minds.

But the people in that other world, Sylar's world, some of them were able to read minds. They had abilities that weren't limited in the way that the Capes of Earth Bet were.

And now Taylor Hebert could read every thought they had before they even had them.

Hebert turned her head and stared at Alexandria for a moment before her lip curled up in the tiniest of smirks. It was so small that anyone without Alexandria's thinker powers wouldn't have noticed it, but it had to be deliberate.

To anyone else her face would have looked completely expressionless. Alexandria wasn't sure how she felt about it. She'd been worried about Hebert's mental stability for a while. Was this a sign that she'd retained some of her humanity or was it a hint that she somehow felt she was above humanity?

Gods shouldn't be petty. It was something Alexandria had been forced to tell herself repeatedly at times when she felt irritated by all the minutia of day to day life. It would be easy to take her frustrations out on people who couldn't defend themselves, but it was something she refused to do. It wasn't just that it would hurt her reputation or because it wasn't the heroic thing to do.

It wasn't a very good human thing to do.

Hebert looked at her for a moment then shrugged slightly. Apparently she was listening in, or maybe she was using the Simurgh's power to guess what Alexandria was tempted to say to her.

" _I will take over all human communications_ ," Hebert said. _"Both to warn people about what is coming, and to inform them of what they themselves will have to do_."

"You'll panic people," Eidolon said.

" _It will be necessary_ ," Taylor said. " _I have placed protections in place, but I have only been able to protect major cities. People who flee will not be protected."_

How could she possibly protect major cities from _Scion,_ Alexandria wondered _._

"Do you need help with that?" Doctor Mother asked. "We have connections with the major media..."

Hebert shook her head. " _I shall handle it myself_."

"When will all this happen?" Eidolon asked.

" _The moment I begin the Harvest, Scion will sense the desecration of his partner's corpse_."

"We've been harvesting the Passengers for decades," Doctor Mother said. "Why would he only notice it now?"

" _What you have taken so far extends to the depth of a fingernail. I will take it all and approach him wearing the corpse of his beloved_."

"Am I the only one who thinks we shouldn't do that?" Tattletale asked. She looked around. "Anybody?"

They looked at each other with grim faces. They'd been preparing for decades, and yet somehow it didn't seem like it had been enough time. Yet if they didn't do it now predictions were that Scion would go berserk randomly, at a time when they were less prepared.

"All our assets are in place," Eidolon admitted reluctantly. "We can get people to safety while she's doing it."

"Are we agreed then?" Contessa asked.

It was a sham, pretending that their concession meant anything. The moment that Taylor had gotten the Clairvoyant and Doormaker's powers it was all over for them; there was nothing they could do to stop her.

She forced herself to stay expressionless and she nodded. The others nodded as well. There wasn't a dissenting vote, with the exception of Tattletale who didn't get one.

Once this was over, assuming Scion didn't destroy everything, it would all be over. They wouldn't have any more passengers to implant in people, and they'd only have the new formula, which was noted to have notoriously spotty results, with many weak powers for every exceptional one.

It was a massive gamble, with humanity as the ultimate loser if they failed.

" _Let the Harvest begin_ ," Taylor Hebert said expressionlessly.


	75. Judgment

The Entity was silent as it floated over the skies of Brockton Bay.

Nothing had made a difference. In all the years since losing its partner, saving people, stopping fires, playing with this world of ants, nothing had begun to assuage his grief over her death.

It'd been considering ending it all for a long time. It'd seen humans playing with ants, and it'd seen children burning them. they seemed to take an obscene pleasure in destroying the creatures that were incomprehensible gods to them.

Why not enjoy the same privilege? Nothing else had worked to dampen the tide of grief that had made this world a gray misery for it.

It was getting close to time anyway; the humans had somehow managed to destroy all the superweapons, which meant that they were becoming a threat to the Entity, something that it could not allow. If they somehow incomprehensibly killed the Entity in the same way that they'd killed the Thinker it was possible that they might grow in power to threaten their entire species.

They might even grow to threaten the entire Purpose. That couldn't be allowed.

Beginning here, at the sight of the death of the first Endbringer seemed appropriate. Humans had a concept that had taken the Entity decades to become aware of. Irony wasn't something its species had ever had a need of, but it was something it was beginning o appreciate now.

Let the humans reap what they had sown. they had desecrated the Thinker's corpse and they were obviously planning something, although it wasn't sure quite what.

Thinking had never been its strong suit; that had been the Thinker's role. It had been easier to let the humans give him guidance over the past couple of dozen rotations around this planet's sun. Listening to Kevin Norton had given its existence purpose; albeit an empty and unfulfilling one.

It was barely more intelligent than a human, really. In some ways it was less. All the running around and scrabbling and communication of information that didn't seem to have any intrinsic value was confusing. Humans were difficult to comprehend. The Entity had the knowledge of entire civilizations at its fingertips, but putting it all together was more than it could manage.

Still, the Entity was making its own decisions now. Destroying the humans now wouldn't further the cycle; the shards weren't ready yet, and the Thinker hadn't been able to fill its role. Yet it would be satisfying in a way.

Although it had never been sure that the humans had destroyed its partner, it had harbored suspicions. Their current desecration made those suspicions seem much more valid.

It could make it on its own; the alien member of the Entity's species who had crashed into its partner at the beginning of it all had been alone after all. It wasn't something that it'd ever seen before, not since its species had started traveling in pairs, but it was proof that it could be done.

As the sun rose over the city, It lifted its hand. It was time to see the ants burn. Perhaps this would give it some measure of the pleasure that had been lost to it since the Thinker had been sent to the eternal darkness.

The first rays of the sun struck crystal towers that it didn't remember having seen in the past. the entire city of Brockton Bay shimmered, and a moment later it was gone, leaving only an empty landscape that only showed the previous existence of humanity by the absence of vegetation.

Had it already destroyed the city and merely forgotten it? The loss of memory would be concerning, indicating that somewhere along the line vital shards had been lost. On its home planet, Entities who had been that extensively damaged would have been quick prey for others, their shards quickly divided among hungry brethren.

A frown appeared on its face. Thinking had never been his strong suit but this was something that It didn't understand.

It moved to the nearest major city, faster than the human or even most parahuman eyes could follow, only to see that this city too was gone.

The smaller towns still existed, but as it moved more and more quickly around the world it was astonished to see that every human metropolis with more than one hundred thousand inhabitants had vanished from the planet all at the same time.

Over four thousand cities had vanished in the blink of an eye.

It wasn't something It had ever experienced before, and It couldn't imagine how it had been done. It did notice that the rotation of the earth had been slowed by a full two percent, an indication that the energy to have done this had to have come from somewhere.

Nothing any of the races It'd been exposed to in the past had done anything even close to this.

Moving around the planet, it searched for any human settlements. It reached the other side of the planet in the space of a instant, the planet's moon high in the sky.

Before it could explore any further, a figure appeared in the air before him.

Her skin was as golden as that of the Entity's constructed body, and she was as nude as it once had been, before it had learned about human proprieties and had decided to follow them on a whim. She stared at him impassively.

" _The cycle is broken,"_ she said. " _There is nothing for you to accomplish here."_

It took the Entity a moment to understand what it was sensing. It extended senses that it hadn't bothered to use in millenia and was shocked as it realized that its partners shards were now here. This creature had taken the Thinker's shards almost as though she was a member of his own race.

This was something that no species had managed in all the species that the Entity had ever encountered. It had encountered others like itself and they'd shared shards. None of them had experienced anything remotely like this.

Still, the Entity's species was designed to deal with the unexpected.

It sent it's mind flashing through dimensional layers, looking for the place where this usurper had placed her real body. A lesser species could not be allowed to do something like this, lest they become a threat to the Entities and their Purpose.

Pain suddenly struck it, pain such as it hadn't experienced since it had left the homeworld. Another Entity had somehow intruded on the world it had secreted its real body, and even now was sliding against it, pulling shards away from it.

Normally Entities shared shards, trading as they struck one another. This Entity however seemed to have an obscene ability to hold onto its own shards. Instead, it pulled and the shards that had been with the Entity since the last cycle came away painfully.

The Entity opened its mouth and screamed. Every human within a thousand miles heard the sound; those within twenty miles were deafened.

The few humans who were close enough to actually see the body of them had their skeletons vibrated out of their body, eyeballs exploding and flesh melting from the power of the vibration which also caused an earthquake.

They were near the ocean, and the earthquake was already propagating into a massive tsunami.

Instinctively the Entity lashed out, the movement of its body shaking the barren earth on which it was hidden. It scraped against the side of the other Entity, but the other Entity's shell was curiously resilient, losing only a few shards instead of the plethora that should have been lost.

The shards it did take were enough for it to realize what had happened. The foreign Entity was the human floating before it, her body bloated with a hundred thousand dead shards from its partner. She was an imposter, an usurper, and she intended to devour the Entity entirely to protect her species.

He turned and sent a blast out, obliterating a small human town in the space of an instant. Most of the humans that resided there hadn't even had time to wake up. Now they never would.

Again the Entity felt pain as the true body of the woman in front of it rubbed up against its true body again. This time it was ready for the pain, and it lashed out. It had it's own version of Sting; it hadn't been foolish enough to hand that of all shards out. If it could reach her core, strike at her vital shards it would be able to harvest what shards she had that remained viable.

The hand it had used to destroy the human town was suddenly gone. It stared uncomprehendingly at it, then up at her.

" _This is my world_ ," the woman said. " _And once I am done protecting it, I will devour your entire species_."

She was taunting it. Was she still human enough to believe that it had that kind of human weaknesses? Humans had an unpleasant tendency to anthropomorphize everything from the lesser species they kept as companions to objects.

Was this a weakness it could exploit?

Its understanding of human psychology was minimal. It hadn't bothered to learn because in the wake of its partners death nothing had seemed important. It was the Thinker's role to understand species. The Warrior's role was to fight.

Thinking that she could cause it to make mistakes by exploiting anger that did not exist was a mistake that would lead to her end.

Turning, it exploded into motion, at speeds even human technology wouldn't have been able to follow. The woman, however didn't seem to have any trouble. She seemed to _anticipate_ what the Entity was planning, and as it reached the locus of a major faultline against one continent's east coast, she was already there waiting for it.

" _There is time to leave_ ," the woman said. " _You do not have to die._ "

She was lying. The Entity had tasted her malevolence, her determination, her desire to destroy it and everything it represented. She was trying to confuse it, speaking about destroying its species in one breath and then mercy in the next.

The destruction of its species was her real goal. The Entity knew it somehow without knowing how it knew it. The thought that the idea might have been implanted within it was foreign to it; real telepathy had not existed in any species explored by the entity's so far, and the Entity was immune to being Mastered or having its powers copied by any power in its arsenal.

Fear wasn't an emotion that Entities experienced, so it wasn't certain what the sensation it was experiencing now was. All it knew was that it was unpleasant, even more unpleasant than having its essence pulled away every time the woman pulled against it.

" _Or perhaps that is your desire,"_ the woman said.

Her expression did not change, but the idea was startling to the Entity. Why would it want to cease existence?

While it was true that it's place in the grand Purpose was over, that the cycle could no longer continue, it had to have some reason to continue existing. After all, self termination was as foreign to its species as fear.

It still had hundreds of cycles left. Terminating early wouldn't serve its purpose at all.

Pain struck it again, but this time instead of ending it continued. The woman was wrapping her massive body around the Entity's own, and this time she wasn't letting go. A tendril was moving from the woman's body, burrowing into the Entity, heading for its core.

The world began to tremble as the entity struggled.

Suddenly the projection of the woman was standing before the Entity. She leaned forward and spoke into its ear.

" _I am the alpha and the omega, the end and the beginning. I am Shiva, destroyer of worlds. I am the death of stars and the end of all things."_

A moment later, her mind penetrated that of the Entity, and she shared a memory with it.

 _Time was no longer a constant. With the ability to see the past and the future, and now the ability to travel there with the merest whim, it was a simple matter to pinpoint when it had all started._

 _The humans had taken more shards from the corpse than she'd thought. Even engorged with the power of the Thinker, she was smaller than the Warrior, weaker. She needed more power if she was to face it, power that didn't exist anywhere in the world._

 _A human would have despaired, but she had grown beyond mere human thought processes. Cause and effect were no longer limitations as much as guidelines, and she saw the solution in the space of an instant._

 _The Thinker had once been much larger and much more powerful, swollen with the shards it had taken from another world. It had lost those shards before it had ever struck the earth, stolen by another, strange Entity._

 _A thousand thousand permutations flashed through a mind now able to handle a billion, and the decision was made._

 _Leaping back in time was a simple act of will, although bringing her entire mass was more difficult. She appeared in a time before the Entities had reached the edge of the solar system and she lay in wait._

 _Although cause and effect were guidelines, paradox was not. Destroy the Warrior now and the very reason that she existed would vanish. That in turn would mean the Warrior was not destroyed. Should that happen she would exist again, and she would attack the warrior again. It would happen over and over until the very fabric of space and time was strange, forcing her out of existence into another time frame and the power that had taken her there into hibernation._

 _The Thinker, on the other hand had no such protection. She slammed into the Thinker at vast speeds, ripping shards away as quickly as she could and becoming bloated. The Thinker read her intentions and was horrified._

 _The Thinker crashed to earth, weakened beyond endurance, weak enough that a single member of the species below could find the vital shard and snuff out its existence in a single instant._

The Entity screamed again as it was wrenched back to the present.

This was the being that had killed the Thinker. This was the being that had _murdered_ its partner. It had been premeditated and deliberate. The murder had been done simply because the Thinker had shards that the woman had wanted.

Entities hadn't acted like this since the agreement on the homeworld, the agreement that had led them to escape, to expand out into the universe, to cooperate in an effort to continue on. No entity had murdered another, even if they had feasted on one another's corpses.

" _She was delicious_ ," the woman said. She smirked, an expression that the Entity was only able to understand because she had implanted that understanding in it.

Rage filled it, rage such as it had never known. It's own existence no longer mattered as long as the woman was destroyed with it. It lashed out, blasting her with Sting.

Had it impacted her body, it would have pierced dimensions until it had reached her heart. Instead she dodged it, impossibly fast. It shouldn't have been possible; the Entity was immune to being predicted by shards, and Sting's blast moved at the speed of light.

Yet somehow she wasn't where she'd been when he'd aimed a picosecond before.

Even at the height of its powers the Thinker had never been able to defeat the Warrior in combat. That was not its purpose. Yet this being had powers that the Thinker had not had.

The woman was suddenly by the Entity's side. It lashed out, catching her in the chest with Sting, piercing deep into her core. Somehow she twisted enough that it did not hit anything vital, and the dead shards that Sting left in its wake were suddenly, mysteriously reviving.

" _I have been to the end of the universe and I know the secret to the Final Question,_ " she whispered in the Entities' ear. " _And I will ensure that your species does not survive to see that answer."_

She had the answer, the end of entropy, the way that his species might survive the heat death of the universe? It was possible that she was lying. This species seemed to do it all the time.

Yet the Entity couldn't reject the possibility that this woman did know.

It had to know. It had to have the knowledge that this woman had, the ability to heal shards that should have been dead. Its lifespan was limited to thirty six hundred revolutions of the sun, but it sensed dimly that this creature, this woman in front of it could survive for eternity as long as she had energy.

Even if she didn't she would likely simply go dormant until energy was available.

It was as close to immortality as the Entity had ever experienced, and with it, the Entity would be able to find the answer to the question. It would have the purpose that it had been missing.

If it could no longer travel with the Thinker, then it would steal this woman's creativity and become something new.

In its excitement, the Entity forgot the tiny pain worming deeper and deeper inside of it. It struggled with the creature on the barren world even as it blasted away at her in this one.

A massive blast was dodged by her, flying past her and leaving a massive gouge in the moon.

" _You don't deserve these powers_ ," she hissed. " _You and your entire species have been judged."_

Before it could respond, the tendril worming its way inside it struck.

The Entity stiffened, suddenly unable to move. It's vital shards were being destroyed one by one and there was nothing it could do.

It was being devoured from the inside, like one of this world's eight legged arachnids being eaten alive from the inside by wasp eggs.

Cities started reappearing all over the world, and it suddenly that they had never been gone at all; they'd simply been cloaked from its sight. That kind of technology wasn't in their databases; it could only have come from a human future.

As the world went dark, it wondered what kind of monster this world had created. Had its species, in their own hubris engineered their own downfall?

Death was almost a relief as the woman continued to feed.


	76. Penance

"They say she died," Lacy was saying leaning forward. "Like, she saved us all and then she died. Isn't it tragic?"

Madison desperately hoped that was the case. Taylor Hebert hadn't been seen since the fight in China that had apparently resulted in Scion's death. It had been bad enough when Hebert had killed Leviathan. Madison hadn't slept for a week, having nightmares of Hebert showing up in her bedroom and drowning her in used tampons and spilled fruit juice.

She'd begged her parents to move. If she'd had her way she'd have moved to those Asian islands in the Pacific, the ones farthest away from Brockton Bay as possible to be. On the other hand, hiding on an island from someone with Leviathan's powers probably wouldn't have been very bright.

Kansas would have worked, probably, but her parents had refused. Her father had assets

After Behemoth and the Simurgh she'd breathed a sigh of relief. Not only were the horrors threatening the world gone, but Hebert was in a coma. The nightmares had stopped and the world had seemed to make sense again.

She was going to Arcadia now, and the school was much, much better than Winslow had ever been.

The city was getting back on its feet, especially now that Uber and Leet had come out as heroes. They'd gotten funding from somewhere and were now sponsoring young Tinkers who had ideas that were going to change the world. It was all for a percentage, of course. Somehow their problems with the law had all been resolved overnight.

However, the day everyone's phone's rang at once had been a morning of terror. She'd been in bed and had sleepily reached for her telephone, only to hear Hebert's voice.

It had been a song in a language that she hadn't understood, beautiful and soul moving in ways that she still had trouble dealing with. The message of the song had been simple.

Stay silent and hide, or die and take your friends and family with you. The song had been an entreaty and a command and Madison had found herself without a voice.

When the red aura had gone up over the city, all traffic had stopped. People had waited in silence, barely able to breathe as titans had battled above.

There wasn't footage, of course, although the PRT claimed to have satellite proof. The gigantic gouge in the moon was proof that it had happened. The fact that the world would never be the same was obvious to everyone, and some people had quietly started talking about her with an almost religious reverence.

Madison deeply hoped that Taylor was dead. After all, if she wasn't, that meant that Madison had tormented someone with the powers of Leviathan, Behemoth, the Simurgh and Scion as well as how many others.

While it was possible that she'd forgotten her, it didn't seem likely. She'd rescued Emma from a fate worse than death, but she hadn't healed her in the way that she'd healed some of the others. Panacea had refused to replace Emma's ears on the basis that it was a cosmetic change and she had more important things to do.

Other healers had refused as well, although no one would give a reason why. Madison had tried to keep in touch as much as she could at first because she wanted any information she could get about what Taylor was like. Then she realized that Emma was likely going to be a bigger target, and being anywhere around her was a recipe for disaster.

Emma was now in a long term psychiatric hospital, and no one had any idea when she would get out. Her family was gone and no one who knew what had happened wanted to take her. It was possible that she would live there until she aged out of the system, at which point she'd be thrown out on the street.

In the end, Madison had decided that the only way she could survive was to become the best person she could possibly be. Surprisingly, it turned out to be almost as easy to be popular by actually being nice as by being a bully and spitting on the people below you on the totem pole.

Assuming Taylor didn't show up and murder her one day, she had plans to become a teacher.

Still, she'd feel a lot better if she knew Taylor was dead.

"There's no indication of where she went after the battle," Eidolon said. He was looking a little better, which was surprising in a post-Endbringer world.

No longer having the weight of the world on his shoulders probably helped. He'd been the last line of defense against the Endbringers for so long that he'd forgotten any other kind of life. It was possible now for him to go into retirement, and his legacy would remain untainted as his role in the Endbringers activities was being carefully managed.

"All the Case 53s disappeared," Doctor Mother said soberly. "The best we've been able to ascertain they were returned to their own worlds back in their original bodies."

"So what do we do?' Contessa asked. "I...I'm not even sure what to ask the Path for."

"We figure out how to fight her," Alexandria said. "Just as we've always done. The power she has is too much for anyone, much less a fifteen year old girl."

"She's not fifteen anymore," the Number man said soberly. "I've found references to her throughout history. There was a recently discovered painting of her that is an authentic Leonardo Da Vinci. We're keeping the news carefully controlled to avoid panicking people."

"Or making her cults worse," Alexandria said sourly. "At least the Fallen were people we could fight. These people are just misguided."

"There are references to her in Pharaohs' tombs, in Aztec ruins. She healed people during the Black Death, helped the Spanish Inquisition implode on itself."

"So the world we live in now might not be the world she grew up in?" Alexandria asked, alarmed. The idea that she might be erased from history, might never be born because a child played around with time travel was deeply alarming.

The Number man shrugged and said, "We'll never know. I suspect that it can't be too different because the risk of paradox and erasing herself from history would be too great."

"She's done it in other worlds too," Doctor Mother said. "We've identified at least six other worlds whose history she has explored. All of them had histories that were very different from ours."

"Wouldn't want to get bored," Tattletale said. At everyone's looks she shrugged. "What? If I had that kind of power I'd be visiting the fun places too."

How she'd become an unofficial member of Cauldron, Alexandria wasn't sure. Somehow she'd wormed her way in, and no one was willing to complain because she was useful.

"The question," Alexandria said, "Is what we do about her."

"Nothing," Contessa said. "If we move against her she will depower the Doormaker and the Clairvoyant, possibly the rest of us, and it won't take her long."

"We can't simply let her rule the world, not without a fight. Wasn't there a parahuman on the other world who was able to suppress powers?" Alexandria asked.

"She'd see it coming long before we were able to deploy him. Worse, it's possible that she's grown beyond his ability." Contessa shook her head. "I've checked the Path, and there's nothing we can do."

How valid the Path was when Taylor Hebert couldn't be precogged Alexandria wasn't sure, but she was willing to argue the question.

"The good thing is that she doesn't seem hostile. If anything her goals seem roughly aligned with ours," Legend said. "She seems to be trying to prepare humanity for the next time an Entity attacks."

"She's pushing technology through Uber and Leet, and there is evidence that she is manipulating the political situation to encourage countries to work together," Doctor Mother said. "Villains who were borderline are having changes of heart and converting to the good side. Villains who are irredeemable seem to be suffering upsets."

"The world is changing, and we need to be at the forefront of the change," Eidolon said. He hung his head. "I've got so much to atone for that I don't even know where to start, but I think that trying to make the world a better place is a good start."

"Why do you think she's let us continue to exist?" Legend asked. "We serve a purpose in her plan or she would have ended us long ago."

That sounded uncomfortably like Hebertologist thinking to Alexandria. The cult was growing in ways that bore looking into.

Some people would believe anything given the chance.

"I'm not even sure what our purpose should be," Eidolon admitted. "We've been trying to save the world for so long that I've forgotten what it's like to do anything other than fight."

There were still monsters out there, human monsters who didn't play by all the rules. However, compared to the thrill of fighting an Endbringer these people weren't a challenge at all. Even with his powers waning, Eidolon could fight ninety nine percent of the villains in the world with one eye closed.

Now that he had a fourth slot it would be even easier.

" _So don't_ ," Taylor said.

Everyone reacted, suddenly realizing that she'd been among them the entire time and they just had been ignoring her.

" _I will be taking Contessa_ ," Taylor said. " _The rest of you may decide what you are going to do as you wish_."

Alexandria stepped forward even though she knew it was useless. She hadn't been able to beat Leviathan much less Scion and the power of twenty Endbringers.

"You aren't taking her anywhere."

" _I am letting you know as a courtesy,_ " she said. " _For preparing the way for My coming._ "

"Where are you taking me?" Contessa asked. She seemed resigned to her fate.

Apparently one of the tasks the Path had given her was causing this woman's mother to die. Alexandria could understand the need for revenge, even if it had been necessary for victory. None of their hands were clean, not even Taylor's. After all, she'd committed murders of her own and had made decisions involving deaths.

" _I am studying the nature of the human conscience_ ," Taylor said. " _One of the things that none of my powers give me. I am seeking to discover whether one can be cultivated in people who lack one._ "

"If you're going to punish her, you might as well punish the rest of us," Alexandria blustered.

Tattletale looked suddenly alarmed. Apparently she thought she was good enough to join the group for decisions, but not for the consequences of those decisions.

" _This is the Path she has chosen_ ," Taylor said. " _I am including a few others... Sylar and certain other villains I believe can be redeemed. They will not be harmed, unless they harm themselves."_

"And you won't... _creatively encourage_ them to do that?" Alexandria demanded. She had the Simurgh's power after all.

" _That would invalidate the experiment_ ," she said. " _You others will remain as a control group. Can you grow consciences on your own, or will you remain as you have been, miserable worthless shells of human beings_?"

"Telling us the purpose of the experiment invalidates it,' Doctor Mother said gently.

" _It only sets the beginning parameters_ ," Taylor said. " _You became monsters because you thought it necessary. Can you become human beings again for the same reason_?"

"Is it necessary," Alexandria asked. "Are you threatening us?"

"T _he world creates its own punishments_ ," Taylor said. " _Especially now. I only help the process run more smoothly_."

"Will we be under your yoke forever?" Alexandria asked.

" _Eventually I will learn all I can from this world and the worlds it is attached to_ ," Taylor said. " _And then I will leave this world and visit Scion's kin and show them what a monster can truly be_."

Before Alexandria could say another word Taylor and Contessa vanished in a flash of light.

Contessa found herself on an island. The weather was pleasant and the winds were sweet.

"Where are we?" she asked, looking up at Taylor.

" _Polynesia, in fifty thousand B.C_." Taylor said. " _No human will explore this place for another ten thousand years at least, which means we have all the time in the world to get to know each other._ "

Walking up the beach she saw a fanciful castle on the side of the beach. It looked a little like the Disney castle, and it looked out of place here in the middle of a tropical paradise.

" _My mother loved Disney_ ," Taylor said. " _Would you like to meet her_?"

"What?" Contessa asked. It was so strange to be at a loss for words after decades of always knowing what to say. The Path didn't work on Taylor, which made conversations strangely interesting.

" _You didn't think that I'd leave my mother dead, not when I can go back in time, stop time and use biotinkering to create perfect duplicate bodies for the police to find?_ "

"Doesn't that run a risk of paradox?" Contessa asked.

" _It would if I'd changed things so the world realized she hadn't died,_ " Taylor said. She grimaced. " _As much as I hate to admit it, some things are fixed points in time. Saving my mother in the world would tear a hole in the fabric of reality large enough to swallow the planet."_

Which was why they were standing here now. If Taylor had saved her mother then the world would have ended.

"Why not bring your mother to the present?" Contessa asked.

" _Because my father has found love again,"_ Taylor said. _"In thirty years his spouse will die and once he finishes grieving I will reverse his aging and bring him here. To my mother it will seem like a few weeks or months._ "

That seemed overly optimistic to Contessa. Thinking that parents who haven't seen each other in forty years would be able to find love again, even if it hadn't been long for one of them seemed like a recipe for disaster.

Of course, Taylor had numerous ways to see if it would work or not, so it was possible it would all work well.

"Why do you want to meet your mother?" Contessa asked.

"I _want you to be faced with the wonderful person that you murdered_ ," Taylor said. " _The same as I'm doing with Sylar. Bonesaw could revive the dead, you know, and I've got resources she never had._ "

Was that the game, making them have a relationship with their victims so they could understand how horrible what they'd done had been? Contessa had saved the world. She didn't understand how any amount of hand holding or sitting around a campfire was going to make that any different.

Taylor's experiment was going to fail.

" _I've made my mother and the others ageless_ ," Taylor said, as though she was reading her mind. " _And Sylar already is. You, however aren't. The longer it takes you the less of your life you will have in front of you when we are done._ "

Contessa tried to imagine being stuck on an island for fifty years, surrounded by people she should have rescued instead of having murdered. She shuddered at the the thought.

Taylor glanced at her and said. " _Fifty years seems optimistic, don't you think_?"

As they rounded a bend, she saw members of New Wave talking to a tall, dark haired woman who seemed flush with life. They all looked healthy and happier than Contessa had ever seen them. For people who'd had their skulls opened they seemed remarkably healthy.

Contessa wondered if Taylor had removed those memories or if they'd just been here long enough to learn to cope with them.

" _It'll be paradise for some_ ," Taylor said. Glancing at Contessa she said, " _Less so for others._ "

"What is your ultimate goal?" Contessa asked. "Not with me; obviously this is your idea of an ironic punishment or something. What do you plan to do with the human race?"

" _The same as you should have been doing,_ " Taylor said. " _Preparing them to fight the Entities the next time they come back. Promoting technology, spreading humanity throughout the stars. By the time the Entities become aware, humankind will be so widespread that they have a hope of destroying it._ "

She'd become an urban legend, working from the shadows. As far as the world was concerned she would have vanished forever, even as she made minute adjustments to lead people down the path she preferred.

In all but name, Taylor Hebert was now the Empress of Mankind, with an empire that would last until the stars grew cold. If she answered the ultimate question the Entities had posed, it might even last beyond that.

" _There's a line from a cartoon my father once liked_ ," Taylor said. " _It goes something like... Being_ _God isn't easy. If you do too much, people get dependent on you, and if you do nothing, they lose hope. When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all."_

"And do you think you're God?" Contessa asked.

" _Not yet_ ," Taylor said. " _But someday... who knows? I'll do my best._ "

Contessa had a sudden feeling that it was going to be a long fifty years.

" _Twenty seven years, seven months and three days_ ," Taylor said absently. " _You die on a Tuesday_."

She waved suddenly at the tall woman, her face suddenly losing the inhuman look and filled with a sudden joy. She smiled, her face lighting up as her mother spotted her.

It was almost as though all her inhumanity fell away from her, for at least a little while and she was the little girl she had once been in the face of having hr mother again.

Contessa suddenly had an uneasy feeling that this wouldn't be as easy as she'd thought.

Although she wasn't really surprised she'd die on a Tuesday. Nothing good ever happened on Tuesdays.


End file.
